XXIV. THE VICTORY OF AMOR STODDART
'Christ disarmed Peter, and in so doing He unbuckled the sword of every soldier.'
TERTULLIAN.
A dauntless fighter in his day was Captain Amor Stoddart, seeing he had served in the Parliamentary Army throughout the Civil Wars. In truth, it was no child's play to command a body of men as tough as Oliver's famous Ironsides. Therefore Captain Stoddart had doubtless come through many a bloody struggle, and fought in many a hardly fought contest during those long wars, before the final victory was won.
But now, not a single memory remains of his small individual share in those
'Old unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.'
His story has come down to us as a staunch comrade and a valiant fighter, in a different kind of warfare. His victory was won in a struggle in which all the visible weapons were on the other side; when, through long years, he had only the armour of meekness and of love wherewith to oppose hardship and violence and wrong.
Wherefore, of this fight and of this victory, his own name remains as a symbol and a sign. Not in vain was he called at his birth 'Amor,' which, in the Latin tongue signifies 'Love,' as all men know.
The first meeting between Captain Amor Stoddart and him who was to be thereafter his spirit's earthly captain in the new strange warfare that lay before him, happened on this wise.
In the year 1648, when the long Civil Wars were at last nearing their close, George Fox visited Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and held a meeting with the professors (that is to say the Puritans) there. It was in that same year of 1648, when every day the shadow was drawing nearer of the fatal scaffold that should be erected within the Palace at Whitehall the following January. But although that shadow crept daily nearer, men, for the most part, as yet perceived it not. Fox himself was at this time still young, as years are counted, being only twenty-four years of age. Four other summers were yet to pass before that memorable day when he should climb to the summit of old Pendle Hill, and, after seeing there the vision of a 'great people to be gathered,' should begin himself to gather them at Firbank and Swarthmoor and many another place.
George, though still young in years, was already possessed not only of a strange and wonderful presence, but also of a gift to perceive and to draw the souls of other men, and to knit them to his own.
'I went again to Mansfield,' he says in his Journal, 'where was a Great Meeting of professors and people, where I was moved to pray; and the Lord's power was so great that the house seemed to be shaken. When I had done, one of the professors said, "It was now as in the days of the Apostles, when the house was shaken where they were."'
After Fox had finished praying, with this vehemence that seemed to shake the house, one of the professors began to pray in his turn, but in such a dead and formal way that even the other professors were grieved thereat and rebuked him. Whereupon this praying professor came in all humility to Fox, beseeching him that he would pray again. 'But,' says Fox, 'I could not pray in any man's will.' Still, though he could not make a prayer to order, he agreed to meet with these same professors another day.
This second meeting was another 'Great Meeting.' From far and wide the professors and people gathered to see the man who had learnt to pray. But the professors did not truly seem to care to learn the secret. They went on talking and arguing together. They were 'jangling,' as Fox calls it (that is to say, using endless strings of words to talk about sacred things, without really feeling the truth of them in their hearts), jangling all together, when suddenly the door opened and a grave young officer walked in. ''Tis Captain Amor Stoddart, of Noll's Army,' the professors said one to another, as, hardly stopping for a moment at the stranger's entrance, they continued to 'jangle' among themselves. They went on, speaking of the most holy things, talking even about the blood of Christ, without any feeling of solemnity, till Fox could bear it no longer.
'As they were discoursing of it,' he says, 'I saw through the immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ; and cried out among them saying, "Do you not see the blood of Christ? See it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to serve the living God?" For I saw the blood of the New Covenant how it came into the heart. This startled the professors who would have the blood only without them, and not in them. But Captain Stoddart was reached, and said, "Let the youth speak, hear the youth speak," when he saw that they endeavoured to bear me down with many words.'
'Captain Stoddart was reached.' He, the soldier, accustomed to the terrible realities of a battlefield, knew the sight of blood for himself only too well. George Fox's words may seem perhaps mysterious to us now, but they came home to Amor and made him able to see something of the same vision that Fox saw. We may not be able to see that vision ourselves, but at least we can feel the difference between having the Blood of Christ, that is the Life of Christ, within our hearts, and only talking and 'jangling' about it, as the professors were doing. 'Captain Stoddart was reached.' Having been 'reached,' having seen, if only for one moment, something of what the Cross had meant to Christ, and having felt His Life within, Amor became a different man. To take the lives of his fellowmen, to shed their blood for whom that Blood had been shed, was henceforth for him impossible. He unbuckled his sword, and resigning his captaincy in Oliver's conquering army, just when victory was at hand after the stern struggle, he followed his despised Quaker teacher into obscurity.
For seven long years we hear nothing more of him. Then he appears again at George Fox's side, no longer Captain Stoddart the Officer, but plain Amor Stoddart, a comrade and helper of the first Publishers of Truth.
In the year 1655, Fox's Journal records: 'On the sixth day I had a large meeting near Colchester[33] to which many professors and the Independent teachers came. After I had done speaking and was stepped down from the place on which I stood, one of the Independent teachers began to make a "jangling" [it seems they still went on jangling, even after seven long years!], which Amor Stoddart perceiving said, "Stand up again, George!" for I was going away and did not at the first hear them.'
If Amor Stoddart had unbuckled his sword, evidently he had not lost the power of grappling with difficulties, of swiftly seeing the right thing to do, and of giving his orders with soldier-like precision.
'Stand up again, George!'—a quick, military command, in the fewest possible words. George Fox was more in the habit of commanding other people than of being commanded himself; but he knew his comrade and obeyed without a word.
'I stood up again,' he says, 'when I heard the Independent [the man who had been jangling], and after a while the Lord's power came over him and all his company, who were confounded, and the Lord's truth was over all. A great flock of sheep hath the Lord in that country that feed in His pastures of life.'
Nevertheless, without Amor Stoddart the sheep would have gone away hungry, and would not have been fed at that meeting.
Again we hear of Amor a little later in the same year, still at George Fox's side, but this time not as a passive spectator, nor even merely as a resourceful comrade. He was now himself to be a sufferer for the Truth. He still lives for us through his share in a strange but wonderful scene of George Fox's life. A few months after the meeting at Colchester, the two friends visited Cambridge, and 'there,' says Fox in his Journal, 'the scholars, hearing of me, were up and were exceeding rude. I kept on my horse's back and rode through them in the Lord's power. "Oh," said they, "HE SHINES, HE GLISTERS," but they unhorsed Amor Stoddart before we could get to the inn. When we were in the inn they were so rude in the courts and the streets, so that the miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. And the people of the inn asked us 'what we would have for supper' as is the way of inns. "Supper," said I, "were it not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us!"'
After this treatment, the two friends might have been expected to keep away from Cambridge in the future; but that was not their way. Where the fight was hottest, there these two faithful soldiers of the Cross were sure to be found. The very next year saw Fox back in Cambridgeshire once more; and again Amor Stoddart was with him, standing by his side and sharing all dangers like a valiant and faithful friend.
'I passed into Cambridgeshire,' the Journal continues, 'and into the fen country, where I had many meetings, and the Lord's truth spread. Robert Craven, who had been Sheriff of Lincoln, was with me [it would be interesting to know more about Robert Craven, and where and how he was "reached">[, and Amor Stoddart and Alexander Parker. We went to Crowland, a very rude place; for the townspeople were got together at the inn we went to, and were half drunk, both priest and people. I reproved them for their drunkenness and warned them of the day of the Lord that was coming upon all the wicked; exhorting them to leave their wickedness and to turn to the Lord in time. While I was thus speaking to them the priest and the clerk broke out into a rage, and got up the tongs and fire-shovel at us, so that had not the Lord's power preserved us we might have been murdered amongst them. Yet, for all their rudeness and violence, some received the truth then, and have stood in it ever since.'
George Fox was not the only man to find a faithful and staunch supporter in Amor Stoddart. There is another glimpse of him, again standing at a comrade's side in time of danger, but the comrade in this case is not Fox but 'dear William Dewsbury,' one of the best loved of all the early Friends.
Amor Stoddart was Dewsbury's companion that sore day at Bristol when the tidings came from New England overseas, that the first two Quaker Martyrs, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, had been hanged for their faith on Boston Common. Heavy at heart were the Bristol Friends at the news, and not they only, for assembled with them were some New England Friends who had been banished from their families and from their homes, under pain of the same death that the martyrs had suffered.
'We were bowed down unto our God,' Dewsbury writes, 'and prayer was made unto Him when there came a knocking at the door. It came upon my spirit that it was the rude people, and the life of God did mightily arise, and they had no power to come in until we were clear before our God. Then they came in, setting the house about with muskets and lighted matches. So after a season of this they came into the room, where I was and Amor Stoddart with me. I looked upon them when they came into the room, and they cried as fast as they could well speak, "We will be civil! We will be civil!"
'I spoke these words, "See that you be so." They ran forth out of the room and came no more into it, but ran up and down in the house with their weapons in their hands, and the Lord God caused their hearts to fail and they passed away, and not any harm done to any of us.'
Eleven years after this pass in almost complete silence, as far as Amor is concerned. Occasionally we hear the bare mention of his name among the London Friends. One short entry in Fox's Journal speaks of him as having 'buried his wife.' Then the veil lifts again and shows one more glimpse of him. It is the last.
In 1670, twenty-two years after that first meeting at Mansfield, when Captain Stoddart came into the room, and said, 'Let the youth speak,' George Fox, now a man worn with his sufferings and service, came into another room to bid farewell to his old comrade as he lay a-dying. Fox himself had been brought near to death not long before, but he knew that his work was not yet wholly finished, he was not yet 'fully clear' in his Master's sight.
'Under great sufferings, sorrows, and oppressions I lay several weeks,' he writes in his Journal, 'whereby I was brought so low that few thought I could live. When those about me had given me up to die, I spoke to them to get me a coach to carry me to Gerard Roberts, about twelve miles off, for I found it was my place to go thither. So I went down a pair of stairs to the coach, and when I came to the coach I was like to have fallen down, I was so weak and feeble, but I got up into the coach, and some friends with me. When I came to Gerard's, after I had stayed about three weeks there, it was with me to go to Enfield. Friends were afraid of my removing, but I told them that I might safely go. When I had taken my leave of Gerard and had come to Enfield, I went first to visit Amor Stoddart, who lay very weak and almost speechless. I was moved to tell him "that he had been faithful as a man and faithful to God, and the immortal Seed of Life was his crown." Many more words I was moved to speak to him, though I was then so weak, I could scarcely stand, and within a few days after, Amor died.'
That is all. Very simply he passes out of sight, having heard his comrade's 'well done':—this valiant soldier who renounced his sword.
His name, AMOR, still holds the secret of his power, his silent patience, and of his victory, for
'OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.'
FOOTNOTES:
[33] It was on this visit to Colchester that George Fox had his farewell interview with James Parnell, imprisoned in the Castle.
XXV. THE MARVELLOUS VOYAGE
OF THE GOOD SHIP 'WOODHOUSE'[ToC]
'In the 17th Century England was peculiarly rich, if not in great mystics, at any rate in mystically minded men. Mysticism, it seems, was in the air; broke out under many disguises and affected many forms of life.'—E. UNDERHILL, 'Mysticism.'
'He who says "Yes," responds, obeys, co-operates, and allows this resident seed of God, or Christ Light, to have full sway in him, becomes transformed thereby and recreated into likeness to Christ by whom the inner seed was planted, and of whose nature it is.'—RUFUS M. JONES.
'Through winds and tides, one compass guides.'—A.H. CLOUGH.
'Have mercy upon me, O God, for Thine ocean is so great, and my little bark is so small.'—Breton Fisherman's Prayer.
'Be faithful and still, till the winds cease and the storm be over.' ... 'Friends' fellowship must be in the Spirit, and all Friends must know one another in the Spirit and power of God.'—G. FOX.
'Christopher Holder and I are going ... in obedience to the will of our God, whose will is our joy.'—JOHN COPELAND. 1657.
'The log of the little "Woodhouse" has become a sacred classic.'—WILLIAM LITTLEBOY, Swarthmoor Lecture, 1917.
XXV. THE MARVELLOUS VOYAGE
OF THE GOOD SHIP 'WOODHOUSE'
Master Robert Fowler of Burlington was a well-known figure in all the fishing towns and villages along the Yorkshire coast in the year of grace 1657. A man of substance was he, a master mariner, well skilled in his craft; building his own ships and sailing them withal, and never to be turned back from an adventurous voyage. Many fine vessels he had, sailing over the broad waters, taking the Yorkshire cargoes of wool and hides to distant lands, and bringing back foreign goods in exchange, to be sold again at a profit on his return to old England's shores. Thus up and down the Yorkshire coast men spoke and thought highly of Master Robert Fowler's judgment in all matters pertaining to the sea. On land, too, he seemed prudent and skilful, though some folks looked at him askance of late years, since he had joined himself to that strange and perverse people known as the Quakers.
Yet, in spite of what his neighbours considered his new-fangled religion, Master Robert Fowler was prospering in all his worldly affairs. Even now on the sunny day when our story opens, he was hard at work putting the last touches to a new boat of graceful proportions and gallant curves, that bade fair to be a yet more notable seafarer than any of her distant sisters.
Why then did Master Robert Fowler pause more than once in his work to heave a deep sigh, and throw down his tools almost pettishly? Why did he suddenly put his fingers in his ears as if to shut out an unwelcome sound, resuming his work thereafter with double speed? No one was speaking to him. The mid-day air was very still. The haze that often broods over the north-east coast veiled the horizon. Sea and sky melted into one another till it was impossible to say where earth ended and heaven began. An unwonted silence reigned even on Burlington Quay. No sound was to be heard save for the tap, tap, tap of Master Robert Fowler's hammer.
Again he dropped his tools. Again he looked up to the sky, as if he were listening to an unseen voice.
Someone was truly speaking to him, though no faintest sound vibrated on the air. His inward ear heard clearly these words—
'THOU HAST HER NOT FOR NOTHING.'
His eyes travelled proudly over the nearly completed vessel. Every one of her swelling curves he knew by heart; had learned to know and love through long months of toil. How still she lay, the beauty, still as a bird, poising on the sea. Ah! but the day was coming when she would spread her wings and skim over the ocean, buoyant and dainty as one of the terns, those sea-swallows that with their sharp white wings even now were hovering round her. Built for use she was too, not merely to take the eye. Although small of size more bales of goods could be stowed away under her shapely decks than in many another larger clumsier vessel. Who should know this better than Robert, her maker, who had planned it all?
Was it for the voyage to the Eastern Mediterranean that had been the desire of his heart for many years? How well he knew it, that voyage he had never made! Down the Channel he would go, past Ushant and safely across the Bay. Then, when Finisterre had dropped to leeward, it would be but a few days' sail along the pleasant coasts of Portugal till Gibraltar was reached. And then, heigh ho! for a fair voyage in the summer season, week after week over a calm blue sea to the land-locked harbour where flat-roofed, white-walled houses, stately palm-trees, rosy domes and minarets, mirrored in the still water, gazed down at their own reflections.
Was the Woodhouse for this?
He had planned her for this dream voyage.
Why then came that other Voice in his heart directly he began to build: 'FASHION THEE A SHIP FOR THE SERVICE OF TRUTH!' And now that she was nearly completed, why did the Voice grow daily more insistent, giving ever clearer directions?
What a bird she was! His own bird of the sea, his beautiful Woodhouse! So thought Master Robert Fowler. But then again came the insistent Voice within, speaking yet more clearly and distinctly than ever before: 'THOU HAST HER NOT FOR NOTHING.'
The vision of his sea-swallow, her white wings gleaming in the sun as she dropped anchor in that still harbour; the vision of the white and rose-coloured city stretched like an encircling arm around the turquoise waters, these dreams faded relentlessly from his sight. Instead he saw the Woodhouse beating up wearily against a bleak and rugged shore on which grey waves were breaking. Angry, white teeth those giant breakers showed; teeth that would grind a dainty boat to pieces with no more compunction than a dog who snaps at a fly. Must he take her there? A vision of that inhospitable shore was constantly with him as he worked. 'New England was presented before him.' Day after day he drove the thought from him. Night after night it returned.
'Thou hast her not for nothing. She is needed for the service of Truth.' Master Robert Fowler grew lean and wan with inward struggle, but yield his will he could not, yet disobey the Voice he did not dare. When his wife and children asked what ailed him he answered not, or gave a surly reply. Truth to tell, he avoided their company all he could,—and yet a look was in his eyes when they did not notice as if he had never before felt them half so dear. At length the long-expected day arrived when the completed vessel sailed graciously out to sea. But there was no gaiety on board, as there had been when her sister ships had departed. No cargo had she. No farewells were said. Master Robert Fowler stole aboard when all beside were sleeping. The Woodhouse slipped from the grey harbour into the grey sea, noiselessly as a bird. None of the crew knew what ailed the master, nor why his door was locked for long hours thereafter, until the Yorkshire coast first drew dim, and then faded from the horizon. He would not even tell them whither the vessel was bound. 'Keep a straight course; come back at four bells, and then I will direct you,' was all his answer, when the mate knocked at his door for orders.
But within the cabin a man was wrestling with himself upon his knees; till at last in agony he cried: 'E'en take the boat, Lord, an so Thou wilt, for I have no power to give her Thee. Yet truly she is Thine.'
At that same hour in London an anxious little company was gathered in a house at the back side of Thomas Apostles Church, over the door of which swung the well-known sign of the Fleur-de-luce.
The master of the house, Friend Gerard Roberts, a merchant of Watling Street, sat at the top of the table in a small upper room. The anxiety on his countenance was reflected in the faces round his board. Seven men and four women were there, all soberly clad as befitted ministering Friends. They were not eating or drinking, but solemnly seeking for guidance.
'Can no ship then be found to carry us to the other side? For truly the Lord's word is as a fire and hammer in me, though in the outward appearance there is no likelihood of getting passage,' one Friend was saying.
'Ships in plenty there are bound for New England, but ne'er a one that is willing to carry even one Quaker, let alone eleven,' Friend Roberts answered. 'The colonists' new laws are strict, and their punishments are savage. I know, Friends, ye are all ready, aye and willing, to suffer in the service of Truth. It is not merely the threatened cropping of the ears of every Quaker who sets foot ashore that is the difficulty. It is the one hundred pounds fine for every Quaker landed, not levied on the Friends themselves, mind you—that were simple—but on the owner of the boat in which they shall have voyaged. This it is that hinders your departure. It were not fair to ask a man to run such risk. It is not fair. Yet already I have asked many in vain. Way doth not open. We must needs leave it, and see if the concern abides.'
Clear as a bell rose the silvery tones of a young woman Friend, one who had been formerly a serving-maid at Cammsgill Farm: 'Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Shall not He who setteth a bound to the sea that it shall not pass over, and taketh up the isles as a very little thing—shall not He be trusted to find a ship for His servants who trust in Him, to enable them to perform His will?' As the clear bell-like tones died away the little company, impelled by a united instinct, sank into a silence in which time passed unnoticed. Suddenly, at the same moment, a weight seemed to be removed from the hearts of all. They clasped hands and separated. And at that very moment, although they knew it not, far away on the broad seas, a man, wrestling on his knees in the cabin of his vessel, was saying with bitter tears, 'E'en take, Lord, an so Thou wilt, though I have no power to give her to Thee. Yet truly she is Thine.' When four bells were sounded on the good ship Woodhouse, and a knock came to the door of the cabin as the mate asked for directions, it was in a steady voice that Master Robert Fowler replied from within, 'Mark a straight course for London; and after—whithersoever the Lord may direct.'
Blithely and gaily henceforward the Woodhouse skimmed her way to the mouth of the Thames and dropped anchor at the port of London. But as yet Master Robert Fowler knew nothing of the anxious group of Friends waiting to be taken to New England on the service of Truth (five of them having already been deported thence for the offence of being Quakers, yet anxious to return and take six others with them). Neither did these Friends know anything of Master Robert Fowler, nor of his good ship Woodhouse.
Yet, though unknown to each other, he and they alike were well known to One Heart, were guided by One Hand, were listening to the directions of One Voice. Therefore, though it may seem a strange chance, it was not wonderful really that within a few hours of the arrival of the Woodhouse in the Thames Master Robert Fowler and Friend Gerard Roberts met each other face to face in London City. Nor was it strange that the ship's captain should be moved to tell the merchant of the exercise of his spirit about his ship. In truth all Friends who visited London in those days were wont to unburden themselves of their perplexities to the master of that hospitable house over whose doorway swung the sign of the Fleur-de-luce. Lightly he told it—almost as a jest—the folly of the notion that a vessel of such small tonnage could be needed to face the terrors of the terrible Atlantic. Surely a prudent merchant like Friend Roberts would tell him to pay no heed to visions and inner voices, and such like idle notions? But Gerard Roberts did not scoff. He listened silently. A look almost of awe stole over his face. The first words he uttered were, 'It is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.' And at these words Master Robert Fowler's heart sank down, down like lead.
Long afterwards, describing the scene, he says: 'Also when (the vessel) was finished and freighted, and made to sea, contrary to my will, was brought to London, where, speaking touching this matter to Gerard Roberts and others, they confirmed the matter in behalf of the Lord, that it must be so.'
'It must be so.' This is the secret of Guidance from that day to this. The Inner Voice alone is not always enough for action; the outer need or claim of service alone is not necessarily a call. But when the Inner Voice and the outer need come together, then truly the will of the Lord is plain, and 'It must be so.'
Master Robert Fowler was not yet willing or ready to sacrifice his own wishes. A decisive victory is not to be won in one battle, however severe, but only throughout the stress of a long campaign. The struggle in his cabin, when he allowed the ship's head to be turned towards London, must needs be fought out again. The unreasonableness of such a voyage in such a vessel, the risk, the thought of the dangers and misery it would bring, took possession of his mind once more, as he himself confesses: 'Yet entering into reasoning and letting in temptation and hardships, and the loss of my life, wife, and children, with the enjoyment of all earthly things, it brought me as low as the grave, and laid me as one dead to the things of God.'
'Let the sacrifice be made, if it must be made,' he said to himself, 'but it is too much to expect any man to make it willingly.' For days he went about, in his own words, 'as one dead.'
The eagerness of the Friends to depart, their plans for the voyage, their happy cares, only loaded his spirit the more. It was a dark, sad, miserable time; and a dark, sad, miserable man was the owner of the Woodhouse.
Till on a certain day, the Friends coming as usual to visit his ship brought another with them, a Stranger; taller, stronger, sturdier than them all; a man with a long drooping nose and piercing eyes—yes, and leather breeches! It was, it could be no other than George Fox!
What did he say to Robert Fowler? What words did he use? Did he argue or command? That was unnecessary. The mere presence of the strong faithful servant of the Lord drew out a like faithfulness in the other more timid soul.
Robert Fowler's narrative continues:
'But by His instrument, George Fox, was I refreshed and raised up again, which before was much contrary to myself that I could have as willingly have died as gone; but by the strength of God I was now made willing to do His will; yea even the customs and fashions of the customs house could not stop me.'
'Made willing to do His will.' There is the secret of this 'wonderful voyage.' For it was absurdly dangerous to think of sailing across the Atlantic in such a vessel as the Woodhouse: or it would have been, had it been a mere human plan. But if the all-powerful, almighty Will of God really commanded them to go, then it was no longer dangerous but the only safe thing they could do.
'Our trembling hands held in Thy strong and loving grasp, what shall even the weakest of us fear?'
Perhaps Master Robert expected when once he was ready to obey cheerfully, that all his difficulties would vanish. Instead, fresh difficulties arose; and the next difficulty was truly a great one. The press-gang came by, and took Robert Fowler's servants off by force to help to man the British fleet that was being fitted out to fight in the Baltic; took them, whether they would or no, as Richard Sellar was to be captured in the same way, seven years later.
So now the long voyage to America must be undertaken not only in too small a boat, but with too few sailors to work her. Besides Robert Fowler, only two men and three boys were left on board to sail the ship on this long, difficult voyage.
Presently the Friends began to come on board; and if the captain's heart sank anew as he saw the long string of passengers making for his tiny boat—who shall wonder or blame him? It was a very solemn procession of weighty Friends.
In front came the five, who had been in America before, and who were going back to face persecution, knowing what it meant. Their names were: first that 'ancient and venerable man' William Brend; then young Christopher Holder of Winterbourne in Gloucestershire, a well-educated man of good estate; John Copeland of Holderness in Yorkshire; Mary Weatherhead of Bristol; and Dorothy[34] Waugh, the serving-maid of Preston Patrick, who had been 'convinced and called to the ministry' as she went about her daily work in the family of Friend John Camm, at Cammsgill.
After them followed the other five who had not crossed the Atlantic before, but who were no less eager to face unknown difficulties and dangers. Their names were: William Robinson the London merchant; Robert Hodgson; Humphrey Norton (remember Humphrey Norton, he will be heard of again); Richard Doudney, 'an innocent man who served the Lord in sincerity'; and Mary Clark, the wife of John Clark, a London Friend, who, like most of the others, had already undergone much suffering for her faith. On board the Woodhouse they all came, stepping on deck one after the other solemnly and sedately, while the anxious captain watched them and wondered how many more were to come, and where they were all to be lodged. Once they were on board, however, things changed and felt quite different. It was as if an Unseen Passenger had come with them.
This is Robert Fowler's own account: 'Upon the 1st day of Fourth Month called June received I the Lord's servants aboard, Who came with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with them; so that with courage we set sail and came to the Downs the second day, where our dearly beloved William Dewsbury with Michael Thompson came aboard, and in them we were much refreshed; and, recommending us to the grace of God, we launched forth.'
After this his narrative has a different ring: Master Fowler was no longer going about his ship with eyes cast down and hanging head and a heart full of fear. He had straightened his back and was a stalwart mariner again. Perhaps this was partly owing to the great pleasure that came to him before they actually set sail, when, as he tells, William Dewsbury came on board to visit the travellers. 'Dear William Dewsbury' was the one Friend of all others Robert Fowler must have wished to see once more before leaving England, for it was William Dewsbury's preaching that had 'convinced' Robert Fowler and made him become a Friend a few years before. It was William Dewsbury's teaching about the blessedness of following the inner Voice, the inner guidance, that had led him to offer himself and the Woodhouse for the service of Truth.
Perhaps he said, half in joke, half in earnest, 'O William Dewsbury! O William Dewsbury! thou hast much to answer for! If I had never met thee I should never have undertaken this voyage in my little boat!' If he said this, I think a very tender, thankful light came into William Dewsbury's face, as he answered, 'Let us give thanks then together, brother, that the message did reach thee through me; since without this voyage thou could'st not fully have known the power and the wonder of the Lord.'
Quakers do not have priests to baptize them, or bishops to confirm or ordain them, as Church people do. Yet God's actual presence in the heart is often revealed first through the message of one of His messengers. Therefore there is a special bond of tender fellowship and friendship between those who are truly fathers and children in God, even in a Society where all are friends. In this relation William Dewsbury stood to Robert Fowler.
Reason and fear raised their heads once again, even after William Dewsbury's visit. Robert Fowler thought of going to the Admiral in the Downs to complain of the loss of his servants, and to ask that a convoy might be sent with them. But he did not go, because, as he says, 'From which thing I was withholden by that Hand which was my Helper.'
The south wind began to blow, and they were obliged to put in at Portsmouth, and there there were plenty of men waiting to be engaged, but when they heard that this tiny vessel was actually venturing to cross the Atlantic, not one would sail in her, and this happened again at South Yarmouth, where they put in a few days later.
At Portsmouth, however, the Friends were not idle. They went ashore and held a meeting, or, as Robert Fowler puts it, 'They went forth and gathered sticks and kindled a fire, and left it burning.' Not real sticks for a real fire, of course, but a fire of love and service in people's hearts, that would help to keep the cold world warm in after days.
This was their last task in England. A few hours later they had quitted her shores. The coast-line that followed them faithfully at first, dropped behind gradually, growing fainter and paler, then resting like a thought upon the sea, till it finally disappeared. Only a vast expanse of heaving waters surrounded the travellers.
At first it seemed as if their courage was not to be too severely tested. 'Three pretty large ships which were for the Newfoundland' appeared, and bore the Woodhouse company for some fifty leagues. In their vicinity the smaller vessel might have made the voyage, perilous at best, with a certain amount of confidence. But the Dutch warships were known to be not far distant, and in order to escape them the three 'pretty large ships made off to the northward, and left us without hope or help as to the outward.'
The manner of the departure of the ships was on this wise. Early in the morning it was shown to Humphrey Norton—who seems to have been especially sensitive to messages from the invisible world—'that those were nigh unto us who sought our lives.' He called Robert Fowler, and gave him this warning, and added, 'Thus saith the Lord, ye shall be carried away as in a mist.' 'Presently,' says Robert Fowler, 'we espied a great ship making up to us, and the three great ships were much afraid, and tacked about with what speed they could; in the very interim the Lord fulfilled His promise, and struck our enemies in the face with a contrary wind, wonderfully to our refreshment. Then upon our parting from these three ships we were brought to ask counsel of the Lord, and the word was from Him, "Cut through and steer your straight course and mind nothing but Me."'
'Cut through and steer your straight course, and mind nothing but Me!' Alone upon the broad Atlantic in this cockle-shell of a boat! Only a cockle-shell truly, yet it held a bit of heaven within it—the heaven of obedience. Every day the little company of Friends met in that ship's hold together, and 'He Himself met with us and manifested himself largely unto us,' words that have been proved true by many another company of the Master's servants afloat upon the broad waters from that day to this. There they sat on the wooden benches, with spray breaking over them, the faithful men and women who were daring all for the Truth. Only three times in the whole voyage was the weather so bad that storms prevented their assembling together. Much of the actual navigation of the vessel seems to have been left to the strange passengers to determine. The Captain's narrative continues: 'Thus it was all the voyage with the faithful, who were carried far above storms and tempests, that when the ship went either to the right hand or to the left, their hands joined all as one, and did direct her way; so that we have seen and said, "We see the Lord leading our vessel even as it were a man leading a horse by the head; we regarding neither latitude nor longitude, but kept to our line, which was and is our Leader, Guide, and Rule."'
Besides the guidance vouchsafed to the Friends as a group, some of them had special intimations given to them.
'The sea was my figure,' says Robert Fowler, 'for if anything got up within, the sea without rose up against me, and then the floods clapped their hands, of which in time I took notice and told Humphrey Norton.'[35]
In this account Humphrey Norton always seems to hear voices directing their course, while Robert Fowler generally 'sees figures'—sights that teach him what to do. Guidance may come in different ways to different people, but it does come surely to those who seek for it.
The inward Voice spoke to Robert Fowler also when they were in mid Atlantic after they had been at sea some two weeks:
'We saw another great ship making up to us which did appear far off to be a frigate, and made her sign for us to come to them, which was to me a great cross, we being to windward of them; and it was said "GO SPEAK TO HIM, THE CROSS IS SURE; DID I EVER FAIL THEE THEREIN?" And unto others there appeared no danger in it, so that we did, and it proved a tradesman of London, by whom we writ back.'
The hardest test of their faith came some three weeks later, when after five weeks at sea they had still accomplished only 300 leagues, scarcely a third part of their voyage, and their destination still seemed hopelessly distant. The strong faith of Humphrey Norton carried them all over this trial. 'He (Humphrey Norton) falling into communion with God, told me that he had received a comfortable answer, and also that about such a day we should land in America, which was even so fulfilled. Upon the last day of the fifth month (July) 1657, we made land.'
This land turned out to be the very part to which the Friends had most desired to come. The pilot[36] had expected to reach quite a different point, but the invisible guidance of his strange passengers was clear and unwavering. 'Our drawing had been all the passage to keep to the southward, until the evening before we made land, and then the word was, "There is a lion in the way"; unto which we gave obedience, and said, "Let them steer northwards until the day following."'[37]
That must have been an anxious day on board the Woodhouse. Think of the two different clues that were being followed within that one small boat: the Friends with their clasped hands, seeking and finding guidance; up on deck the pilot, with his nautical knowledge, scoffing very likely at any other method of progress than the reckoning to which he was accustomed. As the slow hours passed, and no land appeared to break the changeless circle of the sea, the Friends felt a 'drawing' to meet together long before their usual time. 'And it was said that we may look abroad in the evening; and as we sat waiting upon the Lord, we discovered the land, and our mouths were opened in prayer and thanksgiving.'
The words are simple as any words could be. But in spite of the 260 years that separate that day from this, its gladness is still fresh. All voyagers know the thrill caused by the first sight of land, even in these days of steamships, when all arrangements can be made and carried out with almost clock-like precision. But in the old time of sailing ships, when a contrary wind or a sudden calm might upset the reckoning for days together, and when there was the added danger that food or water might give out, to see the longed-for land in sight at last must have been even more of an event.
To all the Friends on board the Woodhouse this first sight of America meant a yet deeper blessedness. It was the outer assurance that the invisible guidance they were following was reliable. The Friends rejoiced and were wholly at rest and thankful. But the pilot, instead of being, as might have been expected, convinced at last that there was a wisdom wiser than his own, still resisted. Where some people see life with a thread of guidance running through it unmistakably, others are always to be found who will say these things are nothing but chance and what is called 'coincidence.'
Such an one was the pilot of the Woodhouse. As the land drew nearer, a creek was seen to open out in it. The Friends were sure that their vessel was meant to enter there, but again the pilot resisted. By this time the Friends had learned to expect objections from him, and had learned, too, that it was best not to argue with him, but to leave him to find out for himself that their guidance was right. So they told him to do as he chose, that 'both sides were safe, but going that way would be more trouble to him.' When morning dawned 'he saw, after he had laid by all the night, the thing fulfilled.'
Into the creek, therefore, in the bright morning sunlight the Woodhouse came gaily sailing; not knowing where she was, nor whither the creek would lead. 'Now to lay before you the largeness of the wisdom, will, and power of God, this creek led us in between the Dutch Plantation and Long Island:'—the very place that some of the Friends had felt that they ought to visit, but which it would have been most difficult to reach had they landed in any other spot. Thus 'the Lord God that moved them brought them to the place appointed, and led us into our way according to the word which came unto Christopher Holder: "You are in the road to Rhode Island." In that creek came a shallop to guide us, taking us to be strangers, we making our way with our boat, and they spoke English, and informed us, and guided us along. The power of the Lord fell much upon us, and an irresistible word came unto us, that the seed in America shall be as the sand of the sea; it was published in the ears of the brethren, which caused tears to break forth with fulness of joy; so that presently for these places some prepared themselves, who were Robert Hodgson, Richard Doudney, Sarah Gibbons, Mary Weatherhead, and Dorothy Waugh, who the next day were put safely ashore into the Dutch plantation, called New Amsterdam.'
'New Amsterdam, on an unnamed creek in the Dutch Plantation,' sounds an unfamiliar place to modern ears. Yet when that same Dutch Plantation changed hands and became English territory its new masters altered the name of its chief town. New Amsterdam was re-christened in honour of the king's brother, James, Duke of York, and became known as New York, the largest city of the future United States of America.
As to the unnamed 'creek' into which the Woodhouse was led, that was probably the estuary of the mighty river Hudson. 'Here,' continues Robert Fowler, 'we came, and it being the First Day of the week several came aboard to us and we began our work. I was caused to go to the Governor, and Robert Hodgson with me—he (the Governor) was moderate both in words and actions.'
This moderation on the Governor's part must have been no small comfort to the new arrivals. Also the laws of the New Netherland Colonies, where they had unexpectedly landed, were much more tolerant than those of New England, whither they were bound. Even yet the perils of the gallant Woodhouse were not over. The remaining Friends had now to be taken on to hospitable Rhode Island, the home of religious liberty, from whence they could pursue their mission to the persecuting Colonists on the mainland.
A few days before their arrival at New Amsterdam, the two Roberts (Robert Hodgson and Robert Fowler) had both had a vision in which they had seen the Woodhouse in great danger. The day following their interview with the Governor, when they were once more on the sea, 'it was fulfilled, there being a passage between the two lands which is called by the name of Hell-Gate; we lay very conveniently for a pilot, and into that place we came, and into it were forced, and over it were carried, which I never heard of any before that were; there were rocks many on both sides of us, so that I believe one yard's length would have endangered both vessel and goods.'
Here for the last time the little group of Friends gathered to give thanks for their safe arrival after their most wonderful voyage. If any of them were tempted to think they owed any of their protection and guidance to their own merits and faithfulness, a last vision that came to Robert Fowler must have chased this thought out of their minds once for all.
'There was a shoal of fish,' he says, 'which pursued our vessel and followed her strangely, and along close by our rudder.' The master mariner's eye had evidently been following the movements of the fish throughout the day, as he asked himself: 'What are those fish? I never saw fish act in that way before. Why do they follow the vessel so steadily?' Then, in the time of silent waiting upon God, light streamed upon this puzzle in his mind.
'In our meeting it was shewn to me, these fish are to thee a figure. "Thus doth the prayers of the churches proceed to the Lord for thee and the rest."' That was the explanation of the wonderful voyage. The Woodhouse and her little company had not been solitary and unprotected, even when the three 'pretty great ships' drew off for fear of the Dutch men of war and left them alone.
The prayers of their friends in England were following them across the vast Atlantic, though unseen by human eyes, even as those hosts of shining fish, which surrounded the vessel as she drove her prow through the clear water, would be unseen to a spectator above its surface. George Fox was praying for the travellers. William Dewsbury was sure to be praying for them. Friend Gerard Roberts would be also much in prayer, since the responsibility of the voyage was largely on his shoulders. Besides these, there were the husbands, wives, and little children of some of the Friends, the brothers and sisters of others, all longing for them to arrive safely and do their Master's work. Now here came the fish to assure Robert Fowler that the faith he believed was true. Real as the things we can see or touch or feel seem to us to be, the unseen things are more real still. Ever after, to those who had crossed the Atlantic in the good ship Woodhouse, the assurance of God's clear guidance and the answered prayers of His people must have been the most real of all.
Robert Fowler's story of the marvellous voyage ends with these words: 'Surely in our meeting did the thing run through me as oil and bid me much rejoice.'
FOOTNOTES:
[34] She sometimes spelled her name Dorithy, which is not the way to spell Dorothy now, but spelling was much less fixed in those days.
[35] The meaning seems to be that whenever fear or misgiving came to Fowler's heart, the sea also became stormy; while his spirit remained trustful, the sea was likewise calm.
[36] As the navigating officer of the ship was then called.
[37] It is not quite easy at this distance of time to understand why 'a lion in the way' should mean 'go north,' unless it was because the 'drawing' had been strongly south hitherto, and now that path was blocked.
XXVI. RICHARD SELLAR AND THE 'MERCIFUL MAN'[ToC]
'To resort to force is to lose faith in the inner light. War only results from men taking counsel with their passions instead of waiting upon God. If one believes, as Fox did, that the most powerful element in human nature is that something of God which speaks in the conscience, then to coerce men is clearly wrong. The only true line of approach is by patience to reach down to that divine seed, to appeal to what is best, because it is what is strongest in man. The Quaker testimony against war is no isolated outwork of their position: it forms part of their citadel.'—H.G. WOOD.
'The following narrative we have thought proper to insert in the very words of the sufferer, as taken from his own mouth. The candid Reader will easily excuse the simplicity of its style, and the Plainness of its Expressions. It is the more like the man, and carries the greater evidence of the Honesty and Integrity of the Relator, viz. "An Account of the Sufferings of Richard Seller of Keinsey, a Fisherman, who was prest in Scarborough-Piers, in the time of the two last engagements between the Dutch and English, in the year 1665." These are (says the writer) the very words that proceeded from him, who sat before me weeping.'—BESSE, 'Sufferings of the Quakers.'
XXVI. RICHARD SELLAR AND THE 'MERCIFUL MAN'
Away to the Yorkshire coast we must go, and once more find ourselves looking up at the bold headland of Scarborough Cliff, as it juts out into the North Sea. Away again in time, too, to the year 1665, when George Fox still lay in prison up at the Castle, with his room full of smoke on stormy days when the wind 'drove in the rain forcibly,' while 'the water came all over his bed and ran about the room till he was forced to skim it up with a platter.'
Happily there is no storm raging this time. Our story begins on a still, warm afternoon late in the summer, when even the prisoner up at the Castle can hardly help taking some pleasure in the cloudless blue sky and shining sea spread out above and around him.
But it is not to the Castle we are bound to-day. We need not climb again the steep, worn steps that lead to the top of the hill. Instead, we must descend an equally narrow flight that leads down, down, down with queer twists and turns, till we find ourselves close to the water's edge. Even in the fiercest gales there is shelter here for the red-roofed fishing village that surrounds the harbour, while on a warm afternoon the air is almost oppressively hot. The brown sails of the fishing smacks and the red roofs of the houses are faithfully reflected in the clear water beneath them as in a looking-glass.
Outside the door of one of the houses a rough fisherman is seated on a bench, his back against the house wall, mending his nets. At first sight he looks almost like an old man, for his hair is grey, though his body is still strong and active. His hands are twisted and bear the marks of cruel scars upon them, but his face is peaceful, though worn and rugged. He handles the nets lovingly, as if he were glad to feel them slipping through his fingers again. Evidently the nets have not been used for some time, for there are many holes in them, and the mending is a slow business. As he works the fisherman sings in a low voice, not loud enough for the neighbours to hear but just humming to himself.
Every now and then the door of the house half opens, and a little girl looks out and asks, 'Thou art really there, Father? truly safe back again?' The man looks up, smiling, as he calls back, 'Ay, ay, my maid. Get on with thy work, Margery, and I'll get on with mine.'
'Art thou sure thou art safe, Father?'
He does not answer this question in words, but he raises his voice and sings the next verse of his song a little more loudly and clearly—
'Because on Me his love is set,
Deliver him I will,
And safely bring him higher yet
Upon My holy hil.'
Later on, when the nets are mended and the sun is sinking above the Castle Cliff in a fiery glow, Margery comes out and sits on her father's knee; the lads, home from school, gather round and say, 'Now then, Master Sellar, tell us once more the story of thy absence from us, and about how thou wast pressed and taken on board the Royal Prince. Tell us about the capstan and the lashings; about how they beat thee; what the carpenter and the boatswain's mate did, and how the gunner went down three times on his bare knees on the deck to beg thy life. Let us hear it all again.' 'Yes, please do, Father dear,' chimes in Margery, 'only leave out some of the beatings and the dreadful part, and hurry on very quickly to the end of the story about all the sailors throwing up their caps and huzzaing for Sir Edward, the merciful man.'
The fisherman smiles and nods. He puts his arm more tenderly than ever round his small daughter as he says, 'Ay, ay, dear heart, never thou fear.' Then, drawing Margery closer to him, he begins his tale. It is a long story. The sun has set; the crescent moon has disappeared; and the stars are stealing out, one by one, before he has finished. I wish you and I could listen to that story, don't you? Well, we can! Someone who heard it from the fisherman's own lips has written it all down for us. He is telling it to us in his own words to-day, as he told it to those children in Scarborough village long ago.
Now and then we must interrupt him to explain some of the words he uses, or even alter the form of the sentences slightly, in order fully to understand what it is he is talking about.
But he is telling his own story.
'My name,' begins the fisherman, 'is Richard Sellar. It was during the war between the Dutch and English that I was pressed at Scarborough in 1665.'
'Pressed' means that he was forced to go and fight against his will. When the country is in danger men are obliged to leave their peaceful employments and learn to be soldiers and sailors, in order, as they think, to defend their own nation by trying to kill their enemies. It is something like what people now call 'conscription' that Richard Sellar is talking of when he speaks of 'being pressed.' He means that a number of men, called a 'press-crew,' forced him to go with them to fight in the king's navy, for, as the proverb said, 'A king's ship and the gallows refuse nobody.'
'I was pressed,' Richard continues, 'within Scarborough Piers, and refusing to go on board the ketch [or boat] they beat me very sore, and I still refusing, they hoisted me in with a tackle on board, and they bunched me with their feet, that I fell backward into a tub, and was so maimed that they were forced to swaddle me up with clothes.'
Richard Sellar could not help himself. Bound, bruised, and beaten he was carried off in the boat to be taken to a big fighting ship called the Royal Prince, that was waiting for them off the mouth of the Thames and needing more sailors to man her for the war.
The press-crew however had not captured enough men at Scarborough, so they put in at another Yorkshire port, spelled Burlington then but Bridlington now. It was that same Burlington or Bridlington from which Master Robert Fowler had sailed years before. Was he at home again now, I wonder, working in his shipyard and remembering the wonderful experiences of the good ship Woodhouse? Surely he must have been away on a voyage at this time or he would if possible have visited Richard Sellar in his confinement on the ketch. Happily at Bridlington there also lived two kind women, who, hearing that the ketch had a 'pressed Quaker' on board, sent Richard Sellar a present of food—green stuff and eatables that would keep well on a voyage: these provisions saved his life later on. After this stay in port the ketch sailed on again to the Nore, a big sand-bank lying near the mouth of the Thames.
'And there,' Richard goes on to say, 'they haled me in at a gunport, on board of the ship called the Royal Prince. The first day of the third month, they commanded me to go to work at the capstan. I refused; then they commanded me to call of the steward for my victuals; which I refused, and told them that as I was not free to do the king's work, I would not live at his charge for victuals. Then the boatswain's mate beat me sore, and thrust me about with the capstan until he was weary; then the Captain sent for me on the quarter-deck, and asked me why I refused to fight for the king, and why I refused to eat of his victuals? I told him I was afraid to offend God, for my warfare was spiritual, and therefore I durst not fight with carnal weapons. Then the Captain fell upon me, and beat me first with his small cane, then called for his great cane, and beat me sore, and felled me down to the deck three or four times, and beat me as long as his strength continued. Then came one, Thomas Horner (which was brought up at Easington), and said, "I pray you, noble Captain, be merciful, for I know him to be an honest and a good man." Then said the captain, "He is a Quaker; I will beat his brains out." Then falling on me again, he beat me until he was weary, and then called some to help him; "for" said he, "I am not able to beat him enough to make him willing to do the king's service."'
There Richard lay, bruised and beaten, on the deck. Neither the sailors nor the Captain knew what to do with him. Presently up came the Commander's jester or clown, a man whose business it was to make the officers laugh. 'What,' said he, 'can't you make that Quaker work? Do you want him to draw ropes for you and he won't? Why you are going the wrong way to work, you fool!'
No one else in the whole ship would have dared to call the Captain 'You fool!' No one else could have done so without being put in chains. But the jester might do as he liked. His business was to make the Captain laugh; and at these words he did laugh. 'Show me the right way to make him work, then,' said he. 'That I will gladly,' answered the jester, 'we will have a bet. I will give you one golden guinea if I cannot make him draw ropes, if you will give me another if I do compel him to do so.'
'Marry that I will,' answered the Captain, and forthwith the two guineas were thrown down on the deck, rattling gaily, while all the ship's company stood around to watch what should befall.
'Then the jester called for two seamen and made them make two ropes fast to the wrists of my arms, and reeved the ropes through two blocks in the mizen shrouds on the starboard side, and hoisted me up aloft, and made the ropes fast to the gunwale of the ship, and I hung some time. Then the jester called the ship's company to behold, and bear him witness, that he made the Quaker hale the king's ropes; so veering the ropes they lowered me half-way down, then made me fast again. "Now," said the jester, "noble Captain, you and the company see that the Quaker haleth the king's ropes"; and with that he commanded them to let fly the ropes loose, when I fell on the deck. "Now," said the jester, "noble Captain, the wager is won. He haled the ropes to the deck, and you can hale them no further, nor any man else."'
Not a very good joke, was it? It seems to have pleased the rough sailors since it set them a-laughing. But it was no laughing matter for Richard Sellar to be set swinging in the air strung up by the wrists, and then to be bumped down upon deck again, fast bound and unable to move. The Captain did not laugh either. The thought of his lost money made him feel savage. In a loud, angry voice he called to the boatswain's mate and bade him, 'Take the quakerly dog away, and put him to the capstan and make him work.'
Only the jester laughed, and chuckled to himself, as he gathered up the golden guineas from the deck, and slapped his thighs for pleasure as he slipped them into his pockets.
Meantime the boatswain's mate was having fine sport with the 'Quaker dog,' as he carried out the Captain's orders. Calling the roughest members of the crew to help him, they beat poor Richard cruelly, and abused him as they dragged him down into the darkness below deck.
'Then he went,' says Richard, 'and sat him down upon a chest lid, and I went and sat down upon another beside him; then he fell upon me and beat me again; then called his boy to bring him two lashings and he lashed my arms to the capstan's bars and caused the men to heave the capstan about; and in three or four times passing about the lashings were loosed, no man knew how, nor when, nor could they ever be found, although they sought them with lighted candles.'
The sailors had tied their prisoner with ropes to the heavy iron wheel in the stern of the boat called a capstan; so that as he moved he would be obliged to drag it round and thus help to work the ship. They had made their prisoner as fast as ever they could. Yet, somehow, here he was free again, and his bonds had disappeared! The boatswain's mate couldn't understand it, but he was determined to solve the mystery. He sent for a Bible and made the sailors swear upon it in turn, in that dark, ill-smelling den, that not one of them had loosed Richard. They all swore willingly, but even that did not content the mate. He thought they were lying, and would not let them go till he had turned out all their pockets, and found that not one of them contained the missing lashings that had mysteriously disappeared. Then, at last, even the rough mate felt afraid. Richard seemed to be in his power and defenceless: was he really protected by Something or Someone stronger than any cruel men, the mate wondered?
So he called the sailors round him again, and spoke to them as follows: 'Hear what I shall say unto you; you see this is a wonderful thing, which is done by an invisible hand, which loosed him, for none of you could see his hands loosed, that were so near him. I suppose this man' (said he) 'is called a Quaker, and for conscience' sake refuseth to act, therefore I am afflicted, and do promise before God and man that I will never beat, nor cause to be beaten, either Quaker or any other man that doth refuse, for conscience' sake, to fight for the king. And if I do, I wish I may lose my right hand.' That was the promise of the boatswain's mate.
Three days later the Admiral of the whole fleet, Sir Edward Spragg, came on board the Royal Prince. He was a very fine gentleman indeed. At once every one began to tell him the same story: how they had pressed a Quaker up at Scarborough in the North; how the Quaker had refused to work, and had been given over to the boatswain's mate to be flogged; how the boatswain's mate had fallen upon him and had beaten him furiously, but now refused to lay a finger upon him, saying that he would no longer beat a Quaker or any other man for conscience' sake.
'Send that boatswain's mate to me that he may answer for himself,' said the Admiral. 'Why would you not beat the Quaker?' he demanded in a terrible voice, when the boatswain's mate was brought before him. 'I have beat him very sore,' the mate answered, 'I seized his arms to the capstan bars, and forced them to heave him about, and beat him, and then sat down; and in three or four times of the capstan's going about, the lashings were loosed, and he came and sat down by me; then I called the men from the capstan, and took them sworn, but they all denied that they had loosed him, or knew how he was loosed; neither could the lashings ever be found; therefore I did and do believe that it was an invisible power which set him at liberty, and I did promise before God and the company, that I would never beat a Quaker again, nor any man else for conscience' sake.' The Admiral told the mate that he must lose both his cane of office and his place. He willingly yielded them both. He was also threatened with the loss of his right hand. He held it out and said, 'Take it from me if you please.' His cane was taken from him and he was displaced; but mercifully his right hand was not cut off: that was only a threat.
The Commander had now to find some one else to beat Richard Sellar. So he gave orders to seven strong sailors (called yeomen) to beat Richard whenever they met him, and to make him work. Beat him they did, till they were tired; but they could not make him work or go against his conscience, which forbade him in any way to help in fighting. Then an eighth yeoman was called, the strongest of all. The same order was given to him: 'Beat that Quaker as much as you like whenever you meet him, only see that you make him work.' The eighth yeoman promised gladly in his turn, and said, 'I'll make him!' He too beat Richard for a whole day and a night, till he too grew weary and asked to be excused. Then another wonderful thing happened, stranger even than the disappearance of the lashings. After all these cruel beatings the Commander ordered Richard's clothes to be taken off that he might see the marks of the blows on his body. 'He caused my clothes to be stript off,' Richard says, 'shirt and all, from my head to my waist downward; then he took a view of my body to see what wounds and bruises I had, but he could find none,—no, not so much as a blue spot on my skin. Then the Commander was angry with them, for not beating me enough. Then the Captain answered him and said, "I have beat him myself as much as would kill an ox." The jester said he had hung me a great while by the arms aloft in the shrouds. The men said they also had beaten me very sore, but they might as well have beaten the main mast. Then said the Commander, "I will cause irons to be laid upon him during the king's pleasure and mine."'
A marvellous story! After all these beatings, not a bruise or a mark to be seen! Probably it is not possible now to explain how it happened. Of course we might believe that Richard was telling lies all the time, and that either the sailors did not beat him or that the bruises did show. But why invent anything so unlikely? It is easier to believe that he was trying to tell the truth as far as he could, even though we cannot understand it. Perhaps his heart was so happy at being allowed to suffer for what he thought right, that his body really did not feel the cruel beatings, as it would have done if he had been doing wrong and had deserved them. Or perhaps there are wonderful ways, unknown to us until we experience them for ourselves, in which God will, and can, and does protect His own true servants who are trying to obey Him. That is the most comforting explanation. If ever some one much bigger and stronger than we are tries to bully us into doing wrong, let us remember that God does not save us from pain and suffering always; but He can save us through the very worst pain, if only we are true to Him.
Anyhow, though Richard's beatings were over for the time, other troubles began. He was 'put in irons,' heavily loaded with chains, a punishment usually kept for the worst criminals, such as thieves and murderers. All the crew were forbidden to bring him food and drink even though he was beginning to be ill with a fever—the result of all the sufferings he had undergone. Happily there was one kind, brave man among the crew, the carpenter's mate. Although Sir Edward Spragg had said that any one giving food to Richard would have to share his punishment, this good man was not afraid, and did give the prisoner both food and drink. All this time, Richard had been living on the provisions that the two kind Friends, Thomasin Smales and Mary Stringer, had sent him at Bridlington, having refused to eat the king's food, as he could not do the king's work.
Thankful indeed he must have felt when this kind carpenter's mate came and squeezed up against him among a crowd of sailors, and managed to pass some meat and drink out of his own pocket and into Richard's. His new friend did this so cleverly that nobody noticed. Pleased with his success, he whispered to Richard, 'I'll bring you some more every day while you need food. You needn't mind taking things from me, for they are all bought out of my own money, not the king's.'
'What makes thee so good to me?' whispered back Richard. He was weakened by fever and all unused to kindness on board the Royal Prince. Very likely the tears came into his eyes and his voice trembled as he spoke, though he had borne all his beatings unmoved.
The carpenter's mate told him in reply that before he came on board, both his wife and his mother had made him promise that if any Quakers should be on the ship he would be kind to them. Also, that quite lately he had had a letter from them asking him 'to remember his promise, and be kind to Quakers, if any were on board.' How much we should like to know what put it into the two women's hearts to think of such a thing! Were they Quakers themselves, or had they Quaker friends? Once more there is no answer but: 'God will, and can, and does protect His own.'
Unfortunately this kind man was sent away from the ship to do work elsewhere, and for three days and nights Richard lay in his heavy irons, with nothing either to eat or drink. Some sailors who had been quarrelling in a drunken brawl on deck were thrown into prison and chained up beside Richard. They were sorry for him and did their best to help him. They even gave him something to drink when they were alone, though for his sake they had to pretend that they were trying to hurt and kill him when any of the officers were present. These rough sailors pretended so well that one lieutenant, who had been specially cruel to Richard before, now grew alarmed, and thought the other prisoners really would kill the Quaker.
He went up to Sir Edward's cabin and knocked at the door. 'Who is there?' asked the cabin-boy.
'I,' said the lieutenant, 'I want to speak to Sir Edward.' When he was admitted he said, 'If it please your highness to remember that there is a poor Quaker in irons yet, that was laid in two weeks since, and the other prisoners will kill him for us.'
'We will have a Court Martial,' thought Sir Edward, 'and settle this Quaker's job once for all.'
He told the lieutenant to go for the keys and let Richard out, and to put a flag at the mizen-mast's head, and call a council of war, and make all the captains come from all the other ships to try the Quaker.
It was not yet eight o'clock on a Sunday morning. At the signal, all the captains of all the other ships came hurrying on board the Royal Prince, the Admiral's flag-ship. Richard was fetched up from his prison and brought before this council of war—or Court Martial as it would be called now. The Admiral sat in the middle, very grand indeed; beside him sat the judge of the Court Martial, 'who,' says Richard, 'was a papist, being Governor of Dover Castle, who went to sea on pleasure.' He probably looked grander still. Around these two sat the other naval captains from the other ships. Opposite all these great people was Quaker Richard, so weakened by fever and lame from his heavy fetters that he could not stand, and had to be allowed to sit. The Commander, to give Richard one more chance, asked him if he would go aboard another ship, a tender with six guns. Richard's conscience was still clear that he could have nothing to do with guns or fighting. He said he would rather stay where he was and abide his punishment.
What punishment do you think the judge thought would be suitable for a man who had committed only the crime of refusing to fight, or to work to help those who were fighting?
'The judge said I should be put into a barrel or cask driven full of nails with their points inward and so rolled to death; but the council of war taking it into consideration, thought it too terrible a death and too much unchristianlike; so they agreed to hang me.'
'Too much unchristianlike' indeed! The mere thought of such a punishment makes us shiver. The Governor of Dover Castle, who suggested it, was himself a Roman Catholic. History tells how fiercely the Roman Catholics persecuted the Protestants in Queen Mary's reign, when Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and many others were burnt at the stake for their religion. Since then times had changed, and when the Protestants were in power they too had often persecuted the Roman Catholics in their turn. Perhaps someone whom this 'papist' judge had loved very much had been cruelly put to death, and perhaps that was the reason he suggested this savage punishment for Quaker Richard. We do not know how that may be. But we do know that cruelty makes cruelty, on and on without end. The only real way to stop it, is to turn right round and follow the other law, the blessed law, whereby love makes love.
Richard Sellar was only a rough, ignorant fisherman, but he had begun to learn this lesson out of Christ's lesson book: and how difficult a lesson it is, nobody knows who has not tried to carry it out.
Richard heard his sentence pronounced, that he was to be hanged. When he heard that he was being wrongfully accused of various crimes that he had not committed, he longed to rise and justify himself, but he could only sit or kneel because he was too weak to stand. In vain he tried to rise, and tried to speak. He could neither move nor say a word. He could not even say: 'I am innocent.' He could not even pray to God to help him in his difficulty. Again he tried to rise, and then suddenly in his utter weakness he felt God's power holding him, and a Voice said quite distinctly, three times over, in his heart: 'BE STILL—BE STILL—BE STILL.'
'Which Voice,' says Richard, 'I obeyed and was comforted. Then I believed God would arise. And when they had done speaking, then God did arise, and I was filled with the power of God; and my spirit lifted up above all earthly things; and wonderful strength was given me to my limbs, and my heart was full of the power and wisdom of God; and with glad tidings my mouth was opened, to declare to the people the things God had made manifest to me. With sweat running down, and tears trickling from my eyes, I told them, "The hearts of kings were in the hand of the Lord; and so are both yours and mine; and I do not value what you can do to this body, for I am at peace with God and all men, and with you my adversaries. For if I might live an hundred and thirty years longer, I can never die in a better condition: for the Lord hath satisfied me, that He hath forgiven me all things in this world; and I am glad through His mercy, that He hath made me willing to suffer for His name's sake, and not only so, but I am heartily glad, and do really rejoice, and with a seal in my heart to the same." Then there came a man and laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said, "Where are all thy accusers?" Then my eyes were opened, and I looked about me, and they were all gone.'
The Court Martial was over. Every one of the captains had disappeared. His accusers were gone; but Richard's sentence remained, and was still to be carried out on the following morning. One officer, the same lieutenant who had been cruel to him before, was still unkind to him and called him 'a hypocrite Quaker,' but many others on board ship did their best to save him.
First of all there came up an ancient soldier to the Admiral on the quarter-deck. He 'loosed down his knee-strings, and put down his stockings, and put his cap under his knees, and begged Sir Edward's pardon three times' (this seems to have been the correct behaviour when addressing the Admiral), and the ancient soldier said, 'Noble Sir Edward, you know that I have served His Majesty under you many years, both in this nation and other nations, by the sea, and you were always a merciful man; therefore I do entreat you, in all kindness, to be merciful to this poor man, who is condemned to die to-morrow; and only for denying your order for fear of offending God, and for conscience' sake; and we have but one man on board, out of nine hundred and fifty—only one which doth refuse for conscience' sake; and shall we take his life away? Nay, God forbid! For he hath already declared that, if we take his life away there shall a judgment appear upon some on board, within eight and forty hours; and to me it hath appeared; therefore I am forced to come upon quarter-deck before you; and my spirit is one with his; therefore I desire you, in all kindness, to give me the liberty, when you take his life away, to go off on board, for I shall not be willing to serve His Majesty any longer on board of ship; so I do entreat you once more to be merciful to this poor man—so God bless you, Sir Edward. I have no more to say to you.'
Next came up the chief gunner—a more important man, for he had been himself a captain—but he too 'loosed down his knee-strings, and did beg the Admiral's pardon three times, being on his bare knees before Sir Edward.'
Then Sir Edward said, 'Arise up, gunner, and speak.'
Whereupon the chief gunner answered, 'If it please your worship, Sir Edward, we know you are a merciful man, and therefore I entreat you, in all kindness, to be merciful to this poor man, in whom there remains something more than flesh and blood; therefore I entreat you, let us not destroy that which is alive; neither endeavour to do it; and so God bless you, Sir Edward. I have no more to say to you.' Then he too went away.
It was all of no use. Richard had been sentenced by the Court Martial to be hanged next morning, and hanged he must be.
Only Sir Edward—pleased perhaps at being told so often that he was a merciful man, and willing to show that he had some small idea of what mercy meant—'gave orders that any that had a mind to give me victuals might; and that I might eat and drink with whom I pleased; and that none should molest me that day. Then came the lieutenant and sat down by me, whilst they were at their worship; and he would have given me brandy, but I refused. Then the dinner came up to be served, and several gave me victuals to eat, and I did eat freely, and was kindly entertained that day. Night being come, a man kindly proffered me his hammock to lie in that night, because I had lain long in irons; and I accepted of his kindness, and laid me down, and I slept well that night.'
'The next morning being come, it being the second day of the week, on which I was to be executed, about eight o'clock in the morning, the rope being reeved on the mizen-yard's arm; and the boy ready to turn me off; and boats being come on board with captains from other ships, that were of the council of war, who came on purpose to see me executed; I was therefore called to come to be executed. Then, I coming to the execution place, the Commander asked the council how their judgment did stand now? So most of them did consent; and some were silent. Then he desired me freely to speak my mind, if I had anything to say, before I was executed. I told him I had little at present to speak. So there came a man, and bid me to go forward to be executed. So I stepped upon the gunwale, to go towards the rope. The Commander bid me stop there, if I had anything to say. Then spake the judge and said, "Sir Edward is a merciful man, that puts that heretic to no worse death than hanging."'
The judge, the Governor of Dover Castle, was, as we have heard, a Roman Catholic. To him Sir Edward and Richard Sellar were both alike heretics, one not much worse than the other, since both were outside what he believed to be the only true Church.[38] Sir Edward knew this. Therefore on hearing the word 'heretic' he turned sharp round to the judge, 'What sayest thou?' Apparently the judge felt that he had been unwise to speak his candid thoughts, for he repeated the sentence, leaving out the irritating word 'heretic': 'I say you are a merciful man that puts him to no worse death than hanging.' Sir Edward knew that he had not been mistaken in the word his sharp ears had caught. 'But,' said he, 'what is the other word that thou saidst?' 'That heretic,' repeated the judge. 'I say,' said the Commander, 'he is more like a Christian than thyself; for I do believe thou wouldst hang me if it were in thy power.'
'Then said the Commander to me,' continues Richard, '"Come down again, for I will not hurt an hair of thy head; for I cannot make one hair grow." Then he cried, "Silence all men," and proclaimed it three times over, that if any man or men on board of the ship would come and give evidence that I had done anything that I deserved death for, I should have it, provided they were credible persons. But no man came, neither a mouth opened against me then. So he cried again, "Silence all men, and hear me speak." Then he proclaimed that the Quaker was as free a man as any on board of the ship was. So the men heaved up their hats, and with a loud voice cried, "God bless Sir Edward, he is a merciful man!" The shrouds and tops and decks being full of men, several of their hats flew overboard and were lost.'
We will say good-bye to Richard there, with all the sailors huzzaing round him, throwing up their caps, and Sir Edward standing by with a pleased smile, more pleased than ever now, since it was impossible for any one to deny that he was a merciful, a most merciful man. The change for Richard himself, from being a condemned criminal loaded with chains to being a universal favourite, must have been startling indeed, though his troubles were not over yet. Difficulties surrounded him again when the actual battles with the Dutch began. But, though he could not fight, and was therefore in perpetual danger, he could and did help and heal.
His story tells us how he was able to save the whole ship's company from destruction more than once, and had more marvellous adventures than there is time here to relate. He tells also how the persecuting lieutenant became his fast friend, and eventually helped him to get his freedom.
For he did regain his liberty in the end, and was given a written permission to go home and earn his living as a fisherman. With this writing in his hand no press-crew would dare to kidnap him again. So back he came to Scarborough, to the red-roofed cottage by the water's edge, to his unmended nets, and to the little daughter with whom we saw him first. Most likely at this time George Fox was still a prisoner in the Castle. If so, one of the very first things Richard did, we may be sure, was to climb the many stone steps up to the Castle and seek his friend in his cheerless prison. The fire smoke and the rain would be forgotten by both men as they talked together, and George Fox's face would light up as he heard the story of the lashings that disappeared and the beatings that left no bruise. He was not a man who laughed easily, but doubtless he laughed once, at any rate, as he listened to Richard's story, when he heard of the huzzaing sailors whose hats fell off into the water because they were so energetically sure that 'Sir Edward was a very merciful man.'
FOOTNOTES:
[38] The Roman Catholic gentry used sometimes to alarm their Protestant neighbours with blood-curdling announcements that the good times of Queen Mary were coming back, and 'faggotts should be deere yet' (G.M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 87).
XXVII. TWO ROBBER STORIES.
WEST AND EAST[ToC]
'They were changed men themselves, before they went out to change others'—W. PENN, Testimony to George Fox.
'But when He comes to reign, whose right it is, then peace and goodwill is unto all men, and no hurt in all the holy mountain of the Lord is seen.'—G. FOX.
'Wouldst thou love one who never died for thee,
Or ever die for one who had not died for thee?
And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not Himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist, for Man is Love
As God is Love. Every kindness to another is a little death
In the Divine Image, nor can man exist but by brotherhood.'
W. BLAKE, 'Jerusalem.'
'England is as a family of prophets which must spread over all nations, as a garden of plants, and the place where the pearl is found which must enrich all nations with the heavenly treasure, out of which shall the waters of life flow, and water all the thirsty ground, and out of which nation and dominion must go the spiritually weaponed and armed men, to fight and conquer all nations and bring them to the nation of God.'—Epistle of Skipton General Meeting, 1660.
XXVII. TWO ROBBER STORIES.
WEST AND EAST
I
LEONARD FELL AND THE HIGHWAYMAN
In that same memorable summer of 1652 when George Fox first visited Swarthmoor Hall and 'bewitched' the household there, he also met and 'bewitched' another member of the Fell family. This was one Leonard Fell, a connection of the Judge, whose home was at Baycliff in the same county of Lancashire. Thither George Fox came on his travels shortly after his first visit to Swarthmoor, when only Margaret Fell and her children were at home, and before his later visit after Judge Fell's return.
'I went to Becliff,' says the Journal, 'where Leonard Fell was convinced, and became a minister of the everlasting Gospel. Several others were convinced there and came into obedience to truth. Here the people said they could not dispute, and would fain have put some others to hold talk with me, but I bid them, "Fear the Lord and not in a light way hold a talk of the Lord's words, but put the things in practice."'
Leonard Fell did indeed put his new faith 'in practice.' He left his home and followed his teacher, sharing with him many of the perils and dangers of his journeys in the Service of Truth. Up and down and across the length and breadth of England the two men travelled side by side along the hedgeless English roads. At first as they went along, Leonard Fell watched George Fox with sharp eyes, in his dealings with the different people they met on their journeys, in order to discover how his teacher would 'put into practice' the central truth he proclaimed: that in every man, however degraded, there remains some hidden spark of the Divine. But put it in practice George Fox did, till at length Leonard Fell, too, learned to look for 'that of God within' every one he met, learned to depend upon finding it, and to be able to draw it out in his turn.
One day, Leonard was travelling in the 'Service of Truth,' not in George Fox's company but alone, when, as he crossed a desolate moor on horseback, he heard the thunderous sound of horses' hoofs coming after him down the road. Looking round, he beheld a masked and bearded highwayman, his figure enveloped in a long flowing cloak, rapidly approaching on a far swifter horse than his own 'Truth's pony.' A moment later, a pistol was drawn from the newcomer's belt and pointed full at Leonard's head.
'Another step and you are a dead man! Your money or your life, and be quick about it!' said the highwayman, as he suddenly pulled the curb and checked his foam-covered horse. At this challenge, Leonard obediently pulled up his own steed with his left hand, while, with his right, he drew out his purse and handed it over to the robber without a word.
The pistol still remained at full cock, pointed straight at his head. 'Your horse next,' demanded the stranger. 'It is a good beast. Though not as swift as mine I can find a use for it in my profession. Dismount; or I fire.'
In perfect silence Leonard dismounted, making no objection, and gave his horse's bridle into the highwayman's outstretched hand. Then at last, the threatened pistol was lowered, and replaced in the robber's belt. Throwing the folds of his long cloak over one shoulder, and carefully adjusting his mask, that not a glimpse of either face or figure should betray his identity, he prepared to depart, leaving his victim penniless and afoot on the wide, desolate moor. But, though the highwayman had now finished with the Quaker, the Quaker had by no means finished with the highwayman.
It was now Leonard's turn to be aggressive. Standing there on the bleak road, alone and unarmed, Leonard Fell raised a warning hand, and solemnly rebuked his assailant for his evil deeds. At the same time he admonished him that it was not yet too late for him to repent and lead a righteous life, before his hour for repentance should be forever passed.
This was a most surprising turn of events for the highwayman. At first he listened silently, too much astonished to speak. Leonard however did not mince matters, and before he had finished his exhortation the other man was in a furious rage. Never before had any of his victims treated him in this fashion. Curses, tears, despair, those were all to be expected in his 'profession'; but this extraordinary man was neither beseeching him for money nor swearing at him in anger. His victim was merely giving a solemn, yet almost friendly warning to the robber of his horse and of his gold.
'You, you cowardly dog!' blustered Leonard's assailant. 'You let me rob you of your purse and of your steed like a craven! You could not even pluck up courage to defend yourself. Yet now, you actually dare to stand and preach at ME, in the middle of the King's highway?'
The pistol was out again with a flourish. This time Leonard faced it calmly, making no movement to defend himself.
'I would not risk my life to defend either my money or my horse,' he answered, looking up straight at the muzzle with a steady eye, 'but I will lay it down gladly, if by so doing I can save thy soul.'
This unexpected answer was altogether too much for the highwayman. Though his finger was already on the trigger of the pistol, that trigger was never pulled. He sat motionless on his horse, staring through the holes in his mask, down into the eyes of his intended victim, as if he would read his inmost soul.
This astonishing man, whom he had taken for a coward, was calmly ready and was apparently quite willing to give his life—his life!—in order to save his enemy's soul. The robber had almost forgotten that he had a soul. His manhood was black and stained now by numberless deeds of violence, by crimes, too many remembered and far more forgotten. Yet he had once known what it was to feel tender and white and innocent. He had certainly possessed a soul long ago. Did it still exist? Apparently the stranger was convinced that it must, since he was actually prepared to stake his own life upon its eternal welfare. Surprising man! He really cared what became of a robber's soul. It was impossible to wish to murder or even to steal from such an one. There could not be another like him, the wide world over. He had best be allowed to continue on his unique adventure of discovering souls, a much more dangerous career it seemed to be than any mere everyday highwayman's 'profession.'
As these thoughts passed through the robber's mind, his hand sought the folds of his cloak, and then drawing Leonard's purse forth from a deep convenient pocket, he returned it to its owner, stooping over him, as he did so, with a low and courtly bow. Next, putting the horse's bridle also back into Leonard's hand, 'If you are such a man as that,' the highwayman said, 'I will take neither your money nor your horse!'
A moment later, as if already ashamed of his impulsive generosity, he set spurs to his horse and disappeared as swiftly as he had come.
Leonard, meanwhile, remounting, pursued his way in safety, with both his horse and his money once more restored to him. But more precious, by far, than either, was the knowledge that his friend's teaching had again been proved to be true. In his own experience he had discovered that there really and truly is an Inward Light that does shine still, even in the hearts of wicked men. Thus was Leonard Fell in his turn enabled to 'put these things in practice.'
II
ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
A few years later, on another desolate road, crossing another lonely plain, another traveller met with a very similar adventure thousands of miles away from England. Only this traveller's experiences were much worse than Leonard Fell's. He was not only attacked by three robbers instead of one alone, but this happened amid many other far worse dangers and narrower escapes. Possibly he even looked back, in after days, to his encounter with the robbers as one of the pleasanter parts of his journey!
This traveller's name was George Robinson, and he was an English Quaker and a London youth. He has left the record of his experiences in a few closely printed pages at the end of a very small book.
'In the year 1657,' he writes, 'about the beginning of the seventh month [September], as I was waiting upon the Lord in singleness of heart, His blessed presence filled me and by the power of His Spirit did command me to go unto Jerusalem, and further said to me, "Thy sufferings shall be great, but I will bear thee over them all."'
This was no easy journey for anyone in those days, least of all for a poor man such as George Robinson. However, he set out obediently, and went by ship to Leghorn in Italy. There he waited a fortnight until he could get a passage in another ship bound for St. Jean d'Acre, on the coast of Palestine, where centuries before Richard C[oe]ur de Lion had disembarked with his Crusaders. Innumerable other pilgrims had landed there, since Richard's time, on their way to see the Holy Places at Jerusalem. George Robinson refused to call himself a pilgrim, but he had a true pilgrim's heart that no difficulties could turn back or dismay.
After staying for eight days in the house of a French merchant at Acre, he set sail in yet a third ship that was bound for Joppa (or Jaffa, as it is called now). 'But the wind rising against us,' Robinson says in his narrative, 'we came to an anchor and the next morning divers Turks came aboard, and demanded tribute of those called Christians in the vessel, which they paid for fear of sufferings but very unwillingly, their demands being very unreasonable, and in like manner demanded of me, but I refusing to pay as according to their demands, they threatened to beat the soles of my feet with a stick, and one of them would have put his hand into my pocket, but the chiefest of them rebuked him. Soon after they began to take me out of the vessel to effect their work, but one of the Turks belonging to the vessel speaking to them as they were taking me ashore, they let me alone, wherein I saw the good Hand of God preserving me.... After this, about three or four days we came to Joppa.'
And there at Joppa (or Jaffa), where Jonah long ago had embarked for Tarshish, and where Peter on the house-top had had his vision of the great white sheet, our traveller landed. He proceeded straightway on what he hoped would have been the last stage of his long journey to Jerusalem.
Alas! he was mistaken. A few pleasant hours of travel he had, as he passed through the palm-groves that encircle the city of Jaffa, and over the first few miles of dusty road that cross the famous Plain of Sharon. Ever as he journeyed he could see the tall tower of Ramleh, built by the Crusaders hundreds of years before, growing taller as he approached, rising in the sunset like a rosy finger to beckon him across the Plains. When he reached it, in the shadow of the tall Tower enemies were lurking. Certain friars up at Jerusalem, in the hilly country that borders the plain, had heard from their brethren at Acre that a heretic stranger from England was coming on foot to visit the Holy City. Now these friars, although they called themselves Franciscans, were no true followers of St. Francis, the 'little poor man of God,' that gentlest saint and truest lover of holy poverty and holy peace. These Jerusalem friars had forgotten his teaching, and lived on the gains they made off pilgrims; therefore, hearing that the heretic stranger from heretic England was travelling independently and not on a pilgrimage, they feared that he might spoil their business at the Holy Shrines. Accordingly they sent word to their brethren, the friars of Ramleh in the plain, to waylay him and turn him back as soon as he had reached the first stage of his journey from Jaffa on the coast.
'The friars of Jerusalem,' says Robinson, 'hearing of my coming, gave orders unto some there [at Ramleh] to stay me, which accordingly was done; for I was taken and locked up in a room for one night and part of the day following, and then had liberty to go into the yard, but as a prisoner; in which time the Turks showed friendship unto me, one ancient man especially, of great repute, who desired that I might come to his house, which thing being granted, he courteously entertained me.'
Four or five days later there came down an Irish friar from Jerusalem to see the prisoner. At first he spoke kindly to him, and greeted him as a fellow-countryman, seeing that they both came from the distant Isles of Britain, set in their silver seas. Presently it appeared, however, that he had not come out of friendship, but as a messenger from the friars at Jerusalem, to insist that the Englishman must make five solemn promises before he could be allowed to proceed on his journey. He must promise:
'1. That he would visit the Holy Places [so the friar called them] as other pilgrims did.
2. And give such sums of money as is the usual manner of pilgrims.
3. Wear such a sort of habit as is the manner of pilgrims.
4. Speak nothing against the Turks' laws.
5. And when he came to Jerusalem not to speak anything about religion.'
George Robinson had no intention of promising any one of these things—much less all five. 'I stand in the will of God, and shall do as He bids me,' was the only answer he would make, which did not satisfy the Irish friar. Determined that his journey should not have been in vain, and persuasion having proved useless, he sought to accomplish his object by force. Taking his prisoner, therefore, he set him on horseback, and surrounding him with a number of armed guards, both horsemen and footmen, whom he had brought down from Jerusalem for the purpose, he himself escorted George Robinson back for the second time to Jaffa. There, that very day, he put him aboard a vessel on the point of sailing for Acre. Then, clattering back with his guards across the plain of Sharon, the Irish friar probably assured the Ramleh friars that they had nothing more to fear from that heretic.
Nothing could turn George Robinson from his purpose. He was still quite sure that his Master had work for His servant to do in His Own City of Jerusalem; and, therefore, to Jerusalem that servant must go. He was obliged to stay for three weeks at Acre before he could find a ship to carry him southwards again. He lodged at this time at the house of a kind French merchant called by the curious name of Surrubi.
'A man,' Robinson says, 'that I had never seen before (that I knew of), who friendly took me into his house as I was passing along, where I remained about twenty days.'
Surrubi was a most courteous host to his Quaker visitor. He used to say that he was sure God had sent him to his house as an honoured guest. 'For,' he continued, 'when my own countrymen come to me, they are little to me, but thee I can willingly receive.' 'The old man would admire the Lord's doing in this thing, and he did love me exceedingly much,' his visitor records gratefully. 'But the friars had so far prevailed with the Consul that in twenty days I could not be received into a vessel for to go to Jerusalem, so that I knew not but to have gone by land; yet it was several days' journey, and I knew not the way, not so much as out of the city, besides the great difficulty there is in going through the country beyond my expression; yet I, not looking at the hardships but at the heavenly will of our Lord, I was made to cry in my heart, "Lord, Thy will be done and not mine." And so being prepared to go, and taking leave of the tender old man, he cried, "I should be destroyed if I went by land," and would not let me go.'
The friars had told the Consul that Robinson had refused to accept their conditions, 'He will turn Turk,' they said, 'and be a devil.' But, thanks to Surrubi's kindness and help, after much trouble Robinson was at length set aboard another ship bound for the south. And thus after bidding a grateful farewell to his host, he made a quick passage and came for the second time to Jaffa. Again he set forth on his last perilous journey. Only a few miles of fertile plain to cross, only a few hours of climbing up the dim blue hills that were already in view on the horizon, and then at last he should reach his goal, the Holy City.
Even yet it was not to be! This time his troubles began before ever he came within sight of the tall Tower of Ramleh, under whose shadow his enemies, the friars, were still lying in wait for him. He says that having 'left the ship and paid his passage, and having met with many people on the way, they peacefully passed him by until he had gone about six miles out of Jaffa.' But on the long straight road that runs like a dusty white ribbon across the wide parched Plain of Sharon, he beheld three other figures coming towards him. Two of them rode on the stately white asses used by travellers of the East. The third, a person of less consequence, followed on foot. As they came nearer, our traveller noticed that they all carried guns as well as fierce-looking daggers stuck in their swathed girdles. However, arms are no unusual accompaniments for a journey in that country, so Robinson still hoped to be allowed to pass with a peaceable salutation. Instead of bowing themselves in return, according to the beautiful Oriental custom, with the threefold gesture that signifies 'My head, my lips, and my heart are all at your service,' and the spoken wish that his day might be blessed, the three men rushed at the English wayfarer and threw themselves upon him, demanding money. One man held a gun with its muzzle touching Robinson's breast, another searched his pockets and took out everything that he could find, while the third held the asses. 'I, not resisting them,' is their victim's simple account, 'stood in the fear of the Lord, who preserved me, for they passed away, and he that took my things forth of my pockets put them up again, taking nothing from me, nor did me the least harm. But one of them took me by the hand and led me on my way in a friendly manner, and so left me.... So I, passing through like dangers through the great love of God, which caused me to magnify His holy name, came, though in much weakness of body, to Ramleh.'
At Ramleh worse dangers even than he had met with on his former visit were awaiting him. Many more perils and hairbreadth escapes had yet to be surmounted before he could say that his feet—his tired feet—had stood 'within thy gates, O Jerusalem.' Throughout these later hardships his faith must have been strengthened by the memory of his encounter with the robbers, and the victory won by the everlasting power of meekness.
East or West, the Master's command can always be followed: the command not to fight evil with evil, but to overcome evil with good.
Leonard Fell was given his opportunity of 'putting in practice the things he had learned' as he travelled in England. Our later pilgrim had the honour of being tested in the Holy Land itself:
'In those holy fields,
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which [nineteen] hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross.'
XXVIII. SILVER SLIPPERS:
OR A QUAKERESS AMONG THE TURKS
'If romance, like laughter, is the child of sudden glory, the figure of Mary Fisher is the most romantic in the early Quaker annals.'—MABEL BRAILSFORD.
'Truly Mary Fisher is a precious heart, and hath been very serviceable here.'—HENRY FELL to Margt. Fell. (Barbadoes, 1656.)
'My dear Father ... Let me not be forgotten of thee, but let thy prayers be for me that I may continue faithful to the end. If any of your Friends be free to come over, they may be serviceable; here are many convinced, and many desire to know the way, so I rest.'—MARY FISHER to George Fox. (Barbadoes, 1655.)
'This English maiden would not be at rest before she went in purpose to the great Emperor of the Turks, and informed him concerning the errors of his religion and the truth of hers.'—GERARD CROESE.
'Henceforth, my daughter, do manfully and without hesitation those things which by the ordering of providence will be put into thy hands; for being now armed with the fortitude of the faith, thou wilt happily overcome all thy adversaries.'—CATHERINE OF SIENA.
XXVIII. SILVER SLIPPERS:
OR A QUAKERESS AMONG THE TURKS
I
The Grand Turk had removed his Court from Constantinople. His beautiful capital city by the Golden Horn was in disgrace, on account of the growing disaffection of its populace and the frequent mutinies of its garrison. For the wars of Sultan Mahomet against the Republic of Venice were increasingly unpopular in his capital, whose treasuries were being drained to furnish constant relays of fresh troops for further campaigns. Therefore, before its citizens became even more bankrupt in their allegiance than they already were in their purses, the ancient Grand Vizier advised his young master to withdraw, for a while, the radiance of his imperial countenance from the now sullen city beside the Golden Horn. Thus it came about that in the late autumn of 1657, Sultan Mahomet, accompanied by his aged minister, suddenly departed with his whole Court, and took up his residence close outside the still loyal city of Adrianople. His state entry into that town was of surpassing splendour, since both the Sultan and his Minister were desirous to impress the citizens, in order to persuade them to open their purse-strings and reveal their hidden hoards. Moreover, they were ever more wishful to dazzle and overawe the Venetian Ambassador, Ballerino, who was still kept by them, unrighteously, a prisoner in the said town.
A full hour or more was the long cavalcade in passing over the narrow stone bridge that spans the turbid Maritza outside the walls of Adrianople. In at the great gate, and down the one, long, meandering street of the city, the imperial procession wound, moving steadily and easily along, since, an hour or two previously, hundreds of slaves had filled up the cavernous holes in the roadway with innumerable barrel loads of sawdust, in honour of the Sultan's arrival. Surrounded by multitudes of welcoming citizens, the procession wound its way at length out on the far side of the city. There, amid a semicircle of low hills, clothed with chestnut woods, the imperial encampment of hundreds and thousands of silken tents shone glistening in the sun.[39]
In one of the most splendid apartments of the Sultan's own most magnificent pavilion, the two chief personages who presided over this marvellous silken city might have been seen, deep in conversation, one sultry evening in June 1658, a few months after the Court had taken up its residence outside the walls of Adrianople. They formed a strange contrast: the boy Sultan and his aged Grand Vizier, Kuprüli the Albanian. Sultan Mahomet, the 'Grand Seignior' of the whole Turkish Empire, was no strong, powerful man, but a mere stripling who had been scarred and branded for life, some say even deformed, by an attack made upon him in earliest infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his own son and heir. Happily he had not succeeded in doing more than maim the child, and, before long, imprisonment and the bow-string put an end to his dangerous career. But though the boy Sultan had escaped with his life, and had now reached the age of sixteen years, he never attained to an imposing presence. He has been described as 'a monster of a man, deformed in body and mind, stupid, logger-headed, cruel, fierce as to his visage,' though this would seem to be an exaggeration, since another account speaks of him as 'young and active, addicted wholly to the delight of hunting and to follow the chase of fearful and flying beasts.' In order to have more leisure for these sports he was wont to depute all the business of government to his Grand Vizier, the aged Albanian chieftain Kuprüli, who now, bending low before his young master, so that the hairs of his white beard almost swept the ground, was having one of his farewell audiences before departing for the battlefield. Kuprüli, though over eighty years of age, was about to face danger for the sake of the boy ruler, who lounged luxuriously on his cushions, glittering with jewels, scented and effeminate, with sidelong, cunning glances and cruel lips. Yet even Sultan Mahomet, touched by his aged Minister's devotion, had been fired with unwonted generosity: 'Ask what you will and you shall have it, even unto the half of my kingdom,' he was exclaiming with true Oriental fervour.
The Grand Vizier again swept the ground with his long white beard, protesting that he was but a humble dead dog in his master's sight, and that one beam from the imperial eyes was a far more precious reward than the gold and jewels of the whole universe. Nevertheless, the Sultan detected a shade of hesitation in spite of the magniloquence of this refusal. There was something the Grand Vizier wished to ask. He must be yet further encouraged.
'Thou hast a boon at heart; I read it in thy countenance,' the Sultan continued, 'ask and fear not. Be it my fairest province for thy revenues, my fleetest Arab for thy stable, my whitest Circassian beauty for thine own, thou canst demand it at this moment without fear.' So saying, as if to prove his words, he waved away with one hand the Court Executioner who stood ever at his side when he gave audience, ready to avenge the smallest slip in etiquette.
The Grand Vizier looked on the ground, still hesitating and troubled, 'The Joy of the flourishing tree and the Lord of all Magnificence is my Lord,' he answered slowly, 'the gift I crave is unworthy of his bountiful goodness. How shall one small speck of dust be noticed in the full blaze of the noonday sun? Yet, in truth, I have promised this mere speck of dust, this white stranger woman, by the mouth of my interpreter, that I would mention to my lord's sublimity her desire to bask in the sunshine of his rays and——'
'A white, stranger woman,' interrupted the Sultan eagerly, 'desiring to see me? Nay, then, the boon is of thy giving, not of mine. Tell me more! Yet it matters not. Were she beauteous as the crescent at even, or ill-favoured as a bird of prey, she shall yet be welcome for thy sake, O faithful Servant, be she a slave or a queen. Tell me only her name and whence she comes.'
Again the Grand Vizier made obeisance. 'Neither foul nor fair, neither young nor old, neither slave nor queen,' he replied. 'She is in truth a marvel, like to none other these eyes have seen in all their fourscore years and more. Tender as the dewdrop is her glance; yet cold as snow is her behaviour. Weak as water in her outward seeming; yet firm and strong as ice is she in strength of inward purpose.'
'Of what nation is this Wonder?' enquired the Sultan. 'She can scarcely be a follower of the Prophet, on whom be peace, since thou appearest to have gazed upon her unveiled countenance?'
'Nay, herein is the greatest marvel,' returned the Minister, 'it is an Englishwoman, come hither in unheard fashion over untrodden ways, with a tale to tickle the ears. She tells my interpreter (who alone, as yet, hath spoken with her) that her home is in the cold grey isle of Britain. That there she dwelt many years in lowly estate, being indeed but a serving-maid in a town called Yorkshire; or so my interpreter understands. She saith that there she heard the voice of Allah Himself, calling her to be His Minister and Messenger, heard and straightway obeyed. Sayeth, moreover, that she hath already travelled in His service beyond the utmost western sea, even to the new land discovered by that same Cristofero of Genoa, whose fellow citizens are at this hour dwelling in our city yonder. Sayeth that in that far western land she hath been beaten and imprisoned. Yet, nevertheless, she was forbidden to rest at home until she had carried her message "as far to the East as to the West," or some such words. That having thus already visited the land where sleeps the setting sun of western skies, she craveth now an audience with the splendid morning Sun, the light of the whole East; even the Grand Seignior, who is as the Shade of God Himself.'
'For what purpose doth she desire an audience?' enquired the Sultan moodily.
'Being a mere woman and therefore without skill, she can use only simple words,' answered the Grand Vizier. '"Tell the Sultan I have something to declare unto him from the Most High God," such is her message; but who heedeth what a woman saith? "Never give ear to the counsels and advices of woman" is the chiefest word inscribed upon the heart of a wise king, as I have counselled ever. Yet, this once, seeing that this maiden is wholly unlike all other women, it might be well to let her bask in the rays of glory rather than turn her unsatisfied away——.' The Vizier paused expectantly. The Sultan remained looking down, toying with the pearl and turquoise sheath of the dagger stuck in his girdle. 'A strange tale,' he said at last, 'it interests me not, although I feel an unknown Power that forces me to listen to thy words. Her name?' he suddenly demanded, lifting his eyes once more to his Minister's face.
'She gives it not,' returned the other, 'speaketh of herself as but a Messenger, repeating ever, "Not I, but His Word." Yet my interpreter, having caused enquiries to be made, findeth that those with whom she lodgeth in the city do speak of her as Maree. Also, some peasants who found her wandering on the mountains when the moon was full, and brought her hither, speak of her by the name of Miriam. Marvelling at the whiteness of her skin, they deem she is a witch or Moon Maiden come hither by enchantment. Yet must she on no account be hurt or disregarded, they say, since she is wholly guileless of evil spells, and under the special protection of Issa Ben Miriam, seeing that she beareth his mother's name.'
The Sultan was growing impatient. 'A fit tale for ignorant peasants,' he declared. 'Me it doth not deceive. This is but another English vagabond sent hither by that old jackal Sir Thomas Bendish, their Ambassador at Constantinople, to dog my footsteps even here, and report my doings to him. I will not see her, were she ten times a witch, since she is of his nation and surely comes at his behest.'
'Let my lord slay his servant with his own hands rather than with his distrust,' returned the Grand Vizier. 'Had she come from Sir Thomas Bendish, or by his orders, straightway to him she should have returned. She hath never even seen him, nor so much as set eyes on our sacred city beside the Golden Horn. Had she gazed even from a distance upon the most holy Mosque of the Sacred Wisdom at Constantinople, she had surely been less utterly astonished at the sight of even our noble Sultan Selim in this city.' So saying, the Grand Vizier turned to the entrance of the pavilion, and gazed towards the town of Adrianople lying in the plain beneath, beyond the poplar-bordered stream of the Maritza. High above all other buildings rose the great Mosque of Sultan Selim, with its majestic dome surrounded by slender sky-piercing minarets. Its 999 windows shone glorious in the rays of the setting sun:—Sultan Selim, the glory of Adrianople, the ruin of the architect who schemed its wondrous beauty; since he, poor wretch, was executed on the completion of the marvel, for this crime only, that he had placed 999 windows within its walls, and had missed, though but by one, the miracle of a full thousand.
The Vizier continued: 'The woman declares she hath come hither on foot, alone and unattended. Her tale is that she came by the sea from the Isles of Britain with several companions (filled all of them with the same desire to behold the face of the Sublime Magnificence) so far as Smyrna; where, declaring their wish unto the English Consul there, he, like a wise-hearted man, advised her and her companions "by all means to forbear."
'They not heeding and still urgently beseeching him to bring them further on their journey, the Consul dissembled and used guile. Therefore, the while he pretended all friendliness and promised to help forward their enterprise, he in truth set them instead on board a ship bound for Venice and no wise for Constantinople, hoping thereby to thwart their purpose, and to force them to return to their native land. Some of the company, discovering this after the ship had set sail, though lamenting, did resign themselves to their fate. Only this maid, strong in soul, would not be turned from her purpose, but declared constantly that Allah, who had commanded her to come, would surely bring her there where He would have her, even to the presence of the Grand Seignior himself. And lo! even as she spoke, a violent storm arose, the ship was driven out of her course and cast upon the Island of Zante with its rugged peaks; and there, speaking to the ship-master, she persuaded him to put her ashore on the opposite coast of the mainland, even at the place known as the Black Mountain; and thence she hath made her way hither on foot, alone, and hath met with nothing but lovingkindness from young and old, so she saith, as the Messenger of the Great King.'
The Sultan's interest was aroused at last: 'Afoot—from the Black Mountain!—incredible! A woman, and alone! It is a journey of many hundreds of miles, and through wild, mountainous country. What proof hast thou that she speaketh truly?'
'My interpreter hath questioned her closely as to her travels. His home is in that region, and he is convinced that she has indeed seen the places she describes. Also, she carries ever in her breast a small sprig of fadeless sea-lavender that groweth only on the Black Mountain slopes, and sayeth that the sea captain plucked it as he set her ashore, telling her that it was even as her courage, seeing that it would never fade.'
But the Sultan's patience was exhausted: 'I must see this woman and judge for myself, not merely hear of her from aged lips,' he exclaimed. 'Witch or woman—moonbeam or maiden—she shall declare herself in my presence. Only, since she doth dare to call herself the messenger of the Most High God, let her be accorded the honours of an Ambassador, that all men may know that the Sultan duly regardeth the message of Allah.'
II
On a divan of silken cushions in the guest chamber of a house in the city of Adrianople, a woman lay, still and straight. Midnight was long past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, filled with languorous aromatic spices.
Mary Fisher could not sleep: she lay motionless as the slow hours passed; gazing into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, while she thought of all that the coming day would bring. The end of her incredible journey was at hand. The Grand Vizier's word was pledged. The Grand Turk himself would grant her an audience before the hour of noon, to receive her Message from the Great King.
Her Message. Through all the difficulties and dangers of her journey, that Message had sustained her. As she had tramped over steep mountain ranges, or won a perilous footing in the water-courses of dry hillside torrents, more like staircases than roads, thoughts and words had often rushed unbidden to her mind and even to her lips. No difficulties could daunt her with that Message still undelivered. Many an evening as she lay down beneath the gnarled trees of an olive grove, or cooled her aching feet in the waters of some clear stream, far beyond any bodily refreshment the intense peace of the Message she was sent to deliver had quieted the heart of the weary messenger. Only now that her goal was almost reached, all power of speech or thought seemed to be taken from her. But, though a candle may burn low, may even for a time be extinguished, it still carries securely within it the possibility of flame. Even so the Messenger of the Great King lay, hour after hour, in the hot night silence; not sleeping, yet smiling: physically exhausted, yet spiritually unafraid.
The heat within the chamber became at length unbearably oppressive to one accustomed, as Mary Fisher had been for weeks past, to sleeping under the open sky. Stretching up a thin white arm through the scented darkness, she managed to unfasten the silken cords and buttons of the curtain above her, and to let in a rush of warm night air. It was still too early for the reviving breeze to spring up that would herald the approach of dawn: too early for even the earliest of the orange hawks, that haunted the city in the daytime, to be awake. Cuddled close in cosy nests under the wide eaves, their slumbers were disturbed for a moment as Mary, half sitting up, shook the pierced lattice-work of the shutters that formed the sides of her apartment. Peering through the interstices of fragrant wood, she caught sight of a wan crescent moon, just appearing behind a group of chestnut-trees on the opposite hill above the river.
The crescent moon! Her guide over sea and land! Had she not come half round the world to proclaim to the followers of that same Crescent, a people truly sitting in gross darkness, the message of the One true Light?
However long the midnight hours, dawn surely must be nigh at hand. Before long, that waning Crescent must set and disappear, and the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.
There lay the slumbering flame of her wondrous Message. The right words wherewith to kindle that flame in the hearts of others would surely be given when the right hour came, however unworthy the Messenger.
'As far as the East is from the West,' the weary woman thought to herself, while the scenes of her wondrous journey across two hemispheres rushed back unbidden to her mind—'even so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.'
At that moment, the eagerly awaited breeze of dawn passed over her hot temples, soothing her like a friend. Refreshed and strengthened, she lay down once more, still and straight; her smooth hair braided round her head; her hands crossed calmly on her breast; in a repose as quiet and austere, even upon those yielding Oriental cushions, as when she lay upon her hard, narrow pallet bed at home.
Before the first apricot flush of dawn crept up the eastern sky, Mary Fisher had sunk into a tranquil sleep.
III
It was broad daylight, though still early, when she awoke. Outside, the garden behind the house was now a rippling sea of rose and scarlet poppies, above which the orange hawks swooped or dived like copper anchors, in the crisp morning air. Within doors, a slave girl stood beside the divan in the guest chamber, clapping her hands gently together to cause the white stranger to awake. But the chamber seemed full of moonlight, although it was broad day. Had the waning crescent retraced her footsteps, or left behind some of her chill beams? Mary Fisher rubbed her eyes. She must surely be dreaming still! Then, waking fully, she saw that the moon-like radiance came from a heap of silvery gauze draperies, reflected in the emerald green tiles of the floor and in the tall narrow mirrors that separated the lattice-work shutters.
A flowing robe of silver tissue was spread out over an ottoman in the centre of the floor. The slave girl at her side was holding up a long veil of shimmering silver, drawing it through her henna-stained finger-tips, with low, gurgling cries of delight; then, stretching out her arms wide, she spread the veil easily to their fullest extent. A moment later, drawing a tiny ring from her finger, she had pressed the veil as easily through the small golden circlet, so fine were the silken folds. Then with significant gestures she explained that all these treasures were for the stranger to wear instead of her own apparel. With scornful glances from her dark almond-shaped eyes she pointed disdainfully to Mary Fisher's own simple garments, which, at her entrance, she had tossed contemptuously into a heap on the floor.
The plain, grey, Quakeress's dress did indeed look simpler than ever amid all the shining Oriental splendour. Worn too it was, and travel-stained in places, though newly washed, carefully mended and all ready for use.
Mary Fisher had been a woman for many years before she became a Quakeress. Nay more, she was a woman still. It is possible that, for about the space of half a minute, she may have looked almost regretfully at the silver tissue draperies and the gauze veil.
Half a minute. Not longer! For her, a Messenger of the Great King, to clothe herself in garments worn by Turkish women, unbelievers, followers of the False Prophet, was impossible, not to be contemplated for an instant. With the gentleness of complete decision she dismissed the slave girl, who departed reluctantly towards the women's apartments. In spite of the froth of shining, billowy folds with which her arms were full, she turned round as she parted the striped, silken hangings of the doorway and drew her dusky orange finger-tips in a significant gesture across her slender brown throat. It was obvious that the slave girl considered this refusal a very serious breach of etiquette indeed!
Left alone, Mary Fisher clothed herself, proudly and yet humbly, in her own simple garments. Her body bore even yet the marks where cruel scourgings in her youth had furrowed deep scars from head to waist. Years ago thus had English Christians received her, when she and her companion had been whipped until the blood ran down their backs beneath the market cross at Cambridge. The two young girls were the first of any of the Friends to be thus publicly scourged. 'This is but the beginning of the sufferings of the people of God,' Mary had exclaimed prophetically, as the first stroke of the lash fell on her shoulders, while the assembled multitudes listened in amazement as the two suffering women went on to pray for mercy on their persecutors.
While here, in Adrianople, under the Crescent, the Infidel Turk, to whom she had come in the power of the very same Message for which she had suffered in Christian countries, was receiving her with kindness and respect, offering to clothe her body in sumptuous apparel, instead of with bloody scars....
Mary Fisher sighed with irrepressible pain at the thought. Looking down, the marks left by the stocks were also plainly visible under the sunburn round her ankles, as she stood, bare-footed, on the crimson rug. She gladly covered up those tell-tale tokens under her white stockings. But where were her shoes? They seemed to have disappeared. Although the few strips of worn leather that she had put off the night before had been scarcely worthy of the name of shoes, their disappearance might be a grave difficulty. Had they been taken away in order to force her to appear bare-footed before the Sultan?
Ah!—here the slave girl was reappearing. Kneeling down, with a triumphant smile she forced the Englishwoman's small, delicate feet—hardened, it is true, by many hundreds of miles of rough travelling, but shapely still—into a little pair of embroidered silver slippers. Turkish slippers! glistening with silver thread and crystal beads, turned up at the pointed toes, and finished by two silver tufted tassels, that peeped out incongruously from under the straight folds of the simple grey frock.
This time Mary Fisher yielded submissively and made not the slightest resistance. It did not matter to her in the least how her feet were shod, so long as they were shod in some way, and she was saved from having to pay a mark of homage to the Infidel. As she sat with folded hands on the divan, awaiting the summons of the Grand Vizier, her deep eyes showed that her thoughts were far, far away from any Silver Slippers.
IV
'Mahomet, sone of the Emperour, sone of God, thrice heavenly and thrice known as the renowned Emperour of the Turks, King of Greece, Macedonia and Moldavia, King of Samaria and Hungary, King of Greater and Lesser Egypt, King of all the inhabitants of the Earth and the Earthly Paradise, Guardian of the Sepulchre of thy God, Lord of the Tree of Life, Lord of all the Emperours of the World from the East even to the West, Grand Persecutor of the Christians and of all the wicked, the Joy of the flourishing Tree' ... and so forth and so on.
The owner of all these high-sounding titles was hunched up on his cushions in the State Pavilion. 'On State occasions, among which it is evident that he included this Quaker audience, he delighted to deck his unpleasing person in a vest of cloth of gold, lined with sable of the richest contrasting blackness. Around him were ranged the servants of the Seraglio—the highest rank of lacqueys standing nearest the royal person, the "Paicks" in their embroidered coats and caps of beaten gold, and the "Solacks," adorned with feathers, and armed with bows and arrows. Behind them were grouped great numbers of eunuchs and the Court pages, carrying lances. These wore the peculiar coiffure permitted only to those of the royal chamber, and above their tresses hung long caps embroidered with gold.
'Mary Fisher was ushered into this brilliant scene with all the honours usually accorded to an Ambassador: the Sultan's dragomans accompanied her and stood waiting to interpret at the interview. She was at this time about thirty-five years of age, "a maid ... whose intellectual faculties were greatly adorned by the gravity of her deportment." ... She must have stood in her simple grey frock, amidst that riot of gold and scarlet, like a lily in a garden of tulips, her quiet face shining in that cruel and lustful place with the joy of a task accomplished, and the sense of the presence of God.'[40]
Thus she stood, at the goal of her journey at last, in the presence of the Grand Turk, she the Messenger of the Great King. There was the Grand Turk, resplendent in his sable and cloth of gold. Opposite to him stood the gentle Quakeress, in her plain garment of grey Yorkshire frieze with its spotless deep collar and close-fitting cap of snowy lawn. Only the Message was wanting now.
At first no Message came.
The Sultan, thinking that the woman before him was naturally alarmed by such unwonted magnificence, spoke to her graciously. 'He asked by his interpreters (whereof there were three with him) whether it was true what had been told him that she had something to say to him from the Lord God. She answered, "Yea." Then he bade her speak on: and she not being forward, weightily pondering what she might say. "Should he dismiss his attendants and let her speak with him in the presence of fewer listeners?" the Grand Turk asked her kindly.' Again came an uncourtly monosyllabic 'No,' followed by another baffling silence.
The executioner, a hook-nosed Kurd with eyes like a bird of prey, stationed, as always, at the Sultan's right hand, began to look at the slight woman in grey with a professional interest. He felt the edge of his blade with a skilful thumb and fore-finger, and turned keen eyes from the slender throat of the Quakeress, rising above the folds of snowy lawn, to the aged neck of the Grand Vizier half hidden by his long white beard. There might be a double failure in etiquette to avenge, should the Sultan's pleasure change and this unprecedented interview prove a failure! The executioner smacked his cruel lips with pleasure at the thought, looking, in his azalea-coloured garment, like an orange hawk himself, all ready to pounce on his victims.
Still Silence reigned:—a keen silence more piercing than the sharpest Damascene blade. It was piercing its way into one heart already. Not into the heart of the aged Grand Vizier. The Grand Vizier was frankly bored, and was, moreover, beginning to be strangely uneasy at his protégée's unaccountable behaviour. He turned to his interpreter with an enquiring frown. The interpreter looked yet more uncomfortable—even terrified. Approaching his master, he began to whisper profound apologies into his ear, how that he ought to have warned him that this might happen; the woman had in truth confessed that she could not tell when the Message would be sent, nor could she give it a moment before it came: 'Sayeth indeed that her Teacher in this strange faith hath been known to keep an assembly of over 1000 people waiting for a matter of three hours, in order to "famish them from words," not daring to open his lips without command.'
'Thou shouldest indeed have mentioned this before! Allah grant that this maiden keepeth us not here so long,' retorted the Grand Vizier, with a scowl of natural impatience, seeing that he was to set forth on his journey to the battle-field that very day, and that moments were growing precious, even in the timeless East. Then, turning to the Sultan, he in his turn began to pour out profuse explanations and apologies. The uncouth, misshapen figure on the central divan, however, paid scant heed to his Minister. Right into the fierce, cruel, passionate heart of Sultan Mahomet that strange silence was piercing: piercing as no words could have done, through the crust formed by years of self-seeking and sin, piercing, until it found, until it quickened, 'That of God within.'
What happened next must be told in the historian Sewel's own words, since he doubtless heard the tale from the only person who could tell it, Mary Fisher herself.
'The Grand Turk then bade her speak the word of the Lord to them and not to fear, for they had good hearts and could hear it. He also charged her to speak the word she had to say from the Lord, neither more nor less, for they were willing to hear it, be it what it would. Then she spoke what was upon her mind.'
She never says what it was. The Message, once delivered, could never be repeated.
'The Turks hearkened to her with much attention and gravity until she had done; and then, the Sultan asking her whether she had anything more to say? she asked him whether he understood what she had said? He answered, "Yes, every word," and further said that what she had spoken was truth. Then he desired her to stay in that country, saying that they could not but respect such an one, as should take so much pains to come to them so far as from England with a message from the Lord God. He also proffered her a guard to bring her into Constantinople, whither she intended. But she, not accepting this offer, he told her it was dangerous travelling, especially for such an one as she: and wondered that she had passed safe so far as she had, saying also that it was in respect for her, and kindness, that he proffered it, and that he would not for anything she should come to the least hurt in his dominions. She having no more to say, the Turks asked her what she thought of their prophet Mahomet? She answered warily that she knew him not, but Christ the true prophet, the Son of God, who was the Light of the World, and enlightened every man coming into the world, Him she knew. And concerning Mahomet, she said that they might judge of him to be true or false according to the words and prophecies he spoke; saying further, "If the word of a prophet shall come to pass, then shall ye know that the Lord hath sent that prophet: but if it come not to pass, then shall ye know that the Lord never sent him." The Turks confessed this to be true, and Mary, having performed her message, departed from the camp to Constantinople without a guard, whither she came without the least hurt or scoff....'
V
Thus Mary returned safe to England, where, if not romance, at any rate solid happiness awaited her in the shape of a certain William Bayly. He, a Quaker preacher and master mariner, having been himself a great traveller and having endured repeated imprisonments in distant countries, could appreciate the courage and success of her unprecedented journey. At any rate, as the historian quaintly tells us, he 'thought her worthy to make him a second wife.'
A few months after her return to England, but while she was still unmarried, Mary Fisher wrote the following account of her travels to some of the friends in whose company she had suffered imprisonment in former days before her great journey.
'My dear love salutes you all in one, you have been often in my remembrance since I departed from you, and being now returned into England and many trials, such as I was never tried with before, yet have borne my testimony for the Lord before the King unto whom I was sent, and he was very noble unto me, and so were all they that were about him: he and all that were about him received the word of truth without contradiction. They do dread the name of God, many of them, and eyes His messengers. There is a royal seed amongst them which in time God will raise. They are more near truth than many Nations, there is a love begot in me towards them which is endless, but this is my hope concerning them, that He who hath raised me to love them more than many others will also raise His seed in them unto which my love is. Nevertheless, though they be called Turks, the seed of them is near unto God, and their kindness hath in some measure been shewn towards His servants. After the word of the Lord was declared unto them, they would willingly have me to stay in the country, and when they could not prevail with me, they proffered me a man and a horse to go five days' journey that was to Constantinople, but I refused and came safe from them. The English are more bad, most of them, yet hath a good word gone through them, and some have received it, but they are few: so I rest with my dear love to you all—Your dear sister, MARY FISHER.'
VI
Forty years later, in 1697, an aged woman was yet alive at Charlestown in America, who was still remembered as the heroine of the famous journey so many years before. Although twice widowed since then, and now with children and grandchildren around her, she was spoken of to the end by her maiden name. A shipwrecked visitor from the other side of the Atlantic describes her in his letters home as 'one whose name you have heard of, Mary Fisher, she that spoke to the Grand Turk.'
In the dwelling of that ancient widow, however old she grew, however many other relics she kept—remembrances of her two husbands, of children and grandchildren—between the pages of her well-worn Bible was there not always one pressed sprig of the fadeless sea-lavender that grows on the rocky shores of the Black Mountain? And, somewhere or other, in the drawer of an inlaid cabinet or work-table there must have been also one precious packet, carefully tied up with ribbon and silver paper, in which some favourite grandchild, allowed for a treat to open it, would find, to her indescribable delight, a little tasselled pair of Turkish
SILVER SLIPPERS.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] A certain Englishman, Paul Rycaut by name, has left a description of this encampment as he saw it on his visit a short time afterwards. 'The tents were raised on a small hill, and about 2000 in number, ranged at that time without order, only the Grand Signior's seemed to be in the midst to overtop all the rest, well worthy observation, costing (as was reported) 180,000 dollars, richly embroidered in the inside with gold. Within the walls of this tent (as I may so call them) were all sorts of offices belonging to the Seraglio, apartments for the pages, chiosks or summer-houses for pleasure, and though I could not get admittance to view the innermost rooms and chambers, yet by the outward and more common places of resort I could make a guess at the richness of the rest, being sumptuous beyond comparison of any in use among Christian princes. On the right hereof was pitched the Grand Vizier's tent, exceeding rich and lofty, and had I not seen that of the Sultan before it, I should have judged it the best that mine eyes had seen. The ostentation and richness of this empire being evidenced in nothing more than the richness of their pavilions, sumptuous beyond the fixed palaces of princes, erected with marble and mortar.'
[40] Quaker Women, by Mabel R. Brailsford.
XXIX. FIERCE FEATHERS[ToC]
'We who were once slayers of one another do not now fight against our enemies.'—JUSTIN MARTYR. A.D. 140.
'Victory that is gotten by the sword is a victory slaves get one over the other; but victory contained by love is a victory for a king.'—GERRARD WINSTANLEY. 1649.
'Here you will come to love God above all, and your neighbours as yourselves. Nothing hurts, nothing harms, nothing makes afraid on this holy mountain.'—G. FOX.
'My friends that are gone or are going over to plant and make outward plantations in America, keep your own plantations in your hearts with the spirit and power of God, that your own vines and lilies be not hurt.'—G. FOX.
'Take heed of many words, what reaches to the life settles in the life. That which cometh from the life and is received from God, reaches to the life and settles others in the life.'—G. FOX.
'An old Indian named Papunehang appreciated the spirit and atmosphere of a Friends' meeting, even if he did not comprehend the words, telling the interpreter afterwards, "I love to feel where words come from."'—A.M. GUMMERE (from John Woolman's Journal).
XXIX. FIERCE FEATHERS
The sunlight lay in patches on the steep roof of the Meeting-house of Easton Township, in the County of Saratoga, in the State of New York. It was a bright summer morning in the year 1775. The children of Easton Township liked their wooden house, although it was made only of rough-hewn logs, nailed hastily together in order to provide some sort of shelter for the worshipping Friends. They would not, if they could, have exchanged it for one of the more stately Meeting-houses at home in England, on the other side of the Atlantic. There, the windows were generally high up in the walls. English children could see nothing through the panes but a peep of sky, or the topmost branches of a tall tree. When they grew tired of looking in the branches of the tree for an invisible nest that was not there, there was nothing more to be hoped for, out of those windows. The children's eyes came back inside the room again, as they watched the slow shadows creep along the white-washed walls, or tried to count the flies upon the ceiling. But out here in America there was no need for that. The new Meeting-house of Easton had nearly as many possibilities as the new world outside. To begin with, its logs did not fit quite close together. If a boy or girl happened to be sitting in the corner seat, he or she could often see, through a chink, right out into the woods. For the untamed wilderness still stretched away on all sides round the newly-cleared settlement of Easton.
Moreover, there were no glass windows in the log house as yet, only open spaces provided with wooden shutters that could be closed, if necessary, during a summer storm. Another larger, open space at one end of the building would be closed by a door when the next cold weather came. At present the summer air met no hindrance as it blew in softly, laden with the fragrant scents of the flowers and pine-trees, stirring the children's hair as it lightly passed. Every now and then a drowsy bee would come blundering in by mistake, and after buzzing about for some time among the assembled Friends, he would make his perilous way out again through one of the chinks between the logs. The children, as they sat in Meeting, always hoped that a butterfly might also find its way in, some fine day—before the winter came, and before the window spaces of the new Meeting-house had to be filled with glass, and a door fastened at the end of the room to keep out the cold. Especially on a mid-week Meeting like to-day, they often found it difficult to 'think Meeting thoughts' in the silence, or even to attend to what was being said, so busy were they, watching for the entrance of that long desired butterfly.
For children thought about very much the same kind of things, and had very much the same kind of difficulties in Meeting, then as now; even though the place was far away, and it is more than a hundred years since that sunny morning in Easton Township, when the sunlight lay in patches on the roof.
It was not only the children who found silent worship difficult that still summer morning. There were traces of anxiety on the faces of many Friends and even on the placid countenances of the Elders in their raised seats in the gallery. There, at the head of the Meeting, sat Friend Zebulon Hoxie, the grandfather of most of the children who were present. Below him sat his two sons. Opposite them, their wives and families, and a sprinkling of other Friends. The children had never seen before one of the stranger Friends who sat in the gallery that day, by their grandfather's side. They had heard that his name was Robert Nisbet, and that he had just arrived, after having walked for two days, thirty miles through the wilderness country to sit with Friends at New Easton at their mid-week Meeting. The children had no idea why he had come, so they fixed their eyes intently on the stranger and stirred gently in their seats with relief when at last he rose to speak. They had liked his kind, open face as soon as they saw it. They liked still better the sound of the rich, clear voice that made it easy for even children to listen. But they liked the words of his text best of all: 'The Belovéd of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him. He shall cover them all the day long.'
Robert Nisbet lingered over the first words of his message as if they were dear to him. His voice was full and mellow, and the words seemed as if they were part of the rich tide of summer life that flowed around. He paused a moment, and then went on, 'And now, how shall the Belovéd of the Lord be thus in safety covered? Even as saith the Psalmist, "He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings shalt thou trust."' Then, changing his tones a little and speaking more lightly, though gravely still, he continued: 'You have done well, dear Friends, to stay on valiantly in your homes, when all your neighbours have fled; and therefore are these messages sent to you by me. These promises of covering and of shelter are truly meant for you. Make them your own and you shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day.'
Here the boys and girls on the low benches under the gallery looked at one another. Now they knew what had brought the stranger! He had come because he had heard of the danger that threatened the little clearing of settlers in the woods. For though New Easton and East Hoosack lay thirty miles apart they were both links in the long chain of Quaker Settlements that had been formed to separate the territory belonging to the Dutch Traders (who dwelt near the Hudson River) from the English Settlements along the valley of the Connecticut. In former days disputes between the Dutch and English Colonists had been both frequent and fierce, until at length the Government had conceived the brilliant idea of establishing a belt of neutral ground between the disputants, and peopling it with unwarlike Quakers. The plan worked well. The Friends, in their settlements strung out over a long, narrow strip of territory, were on friendly terms with their Dutch and English neighbours on either side. Raids went out of fashion. Peace reigned, and for a time the authorities were well content.
A fiercer contest was now brewing, no longer between two handfuls of Colonists but between the inhabitants of two great Continents. For it was just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War of 1775. The part of the country in which Easton Township was situated was already distressed by visits of scouting parties from both British and American armies, and the American Government, unable to protect the inhabitants, had issued a proclamation directing them to leave the country. This was the reason that all the scattered houses in the neighbourhood were deserted, save only the few tenanted by the handful of Friends.
'You did well, Friends,' the speaker continued, 'well to ask to be permitted to exercise your own judgment without blame to the authorities, well to say to them in all courtesy and charity, "You are clear of us in that you have warned us"—and to stay on in your dwellings and to carry out your accustomed work. The report of this your courage and faith hath reached us in our abiding place at East Hoosack, and the Lord hath charged me to come on foot through the wilderness country these thirty miles, to meet with you to-day, and to bear to you these two messages from Him, "The Belovéd of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him," and "He shall cover thee with His feathers all the day long."'
The visitor sat down again in his seat. The furrowed line of anxiety in old Zebulon Hoxie's high forehead smoothed itself away; the eyes of one or two of the younger women Friends filled with tears. As the speaker's voice ceased, little Susannah Hoxie's head, which had been drooping lower and lower, finally found a resting-place, and was encircled by her mother's arm. Young Mrs. Hoxie drew off her small daughter's shady hat, and put it on the seat beside her, while she very gently stroked back the golden curls from the child's high forehead. In doing this she caught a rebuking glance from her elder daughter, Dinah.
'Naughty, naughty Susie, to go to sleep in Meeting,' Dinah was thinking; 'it is very hot, and I am sleepy too, but I don't go to sleep. I do wish a butterfly would come in at the window just for once—or a bird, a little bird with blue, and red, and pink, and yellow feathers. I liked what that stranger Friend said about being 'covered with feathers all the day long.' I wish I was all covered with feathers like a little bird. I wish there were feathers in Meeting, or anywhere close outside.' She turned in her corner seat and looked through the slit in the wall—why there were feathers close outside the wall of the house, red, and yellow, and blue, and pink! What could they be? Very gently Dinah moved her head, so that her eye came closer to the slit. But, when she looked again, the feathers had mysteriously disappeared—nothing was to be seen now but a slight trembling of the tree branches in the wilderness woods at a little distance.
In the mean while her brother, Benjamin Hoxie, on the other low seat opposite the window, was also thinking of the stranger's sermon. 'He said it was a valiant thing to do, to stop on here when all the neighbours have left. I didn't know Friends could do valiant things. I thought only soldiers were valiant. But if a scouting party really did come—if those English scouts suddenly appeared, then even a Quaker boy might have a chance to show that he is not necessarily a coward because he does not fight.' Benjamin's eyes strayed also out of the open window. It was very hot and still in the Meeting-house. Yet the bushes certainly were trembling. How strange that there should be a breeze there and not here! 'Thou shall not be afraid for the arrow that flieth by day,' he thought to himself. 'Well, there are no arrows in this part of the country any longer, now that they say all the Indians have left. I wonder, if I saw an English gun pointing at me out of those bushes, should I be afraid?'
But it was gentle Mrs. Hoxie, with her arm still round her baby daughter, who kept the stranger's words longest in her heart. 'Shall dwell in safety by Him,—the Belovéd of the Lord,' she repeated to herself over and over again, 'yet my husband hath feared for me, and we have both been very fearful for the children. Truly, we have known the terror by night these last weeks in these unsettled times, even though our duty was plainly to stay here. Why were we so fearful? we of little faith. "The Belovéd of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him. He shall cover him with His feathers all the day long."'
And then, in her turn, Mrs. Hoxie looked up, as her little daughter had done, and saw the same three tall feathers creeping above the sill of the open Meeting-house window frame. For just one moment her heart, that usually beat so calmly under her grey Quaker robe, seemed to stand absolutely still. She went white to the lips. Then 'shall dwell in safety by Him,' the words flashed back to her mind. She looked across to where her husband sat—an urgent look. He met her eyes, read them, and followed the direction in which she gazed. Then he, too, saw the feathers—three, five, seven, nine, sticking up in a row. Another instant, and a dark-skinned face, an evil face, appeared beneath them, looking over the sill. The moment most to be dreaded in the lives of all American settlers—more terrible than any visit from civilised soldiers—had come suddenly upon the little company of Friends alone here in the wilderness. An Indian Chief was staring in at their Meeting-house window, showing his teeth in a cruel grin. In his hand he held a sheaf of arrows, poisoned arrows, only too ready to fly, and kill, by day.
All the assembled Friends were aware of his presence by this time, and were watching the window now, though not one of them moved. Mrs. Hoxie glanced towards her other little daughter, and saw to her great relief that Dinah too had fallen asleep, her head against the wooden wall. Dinah and Susie were the two youngest children in Meeting that morning. The others were mostly older even than Benjamin, who was twelve. They were, therefore, far too well-trained in Quaker stillness to move, for any Indians, until the Friends at the head of the Meeting should have shaken hands and given the signal to disperse. Nevertheless, the hearts of even the elder girls were beating very fast. Benjamin's lips were tightly shut, and with eyes that were unusually bright he followed every movement of the Indian Chief, who, as it seemed in one bound and without making the slightest noise, had moved round to the open doorway.
There he stood, the naked brown figure, in full war-paint and feathers, looking with piercing eyes at each man Friend in turn, as if one of them must have the weapons that he sought. But the Friends were entirely unarmed. There was not a gun, or a rifle, or a sword to be found in any of their dwelling-houses, so there could not be any in their peaceful Meeting.
A minute later, a dozen other Redskins, equally terrible, stood beside the Chief, and the bushes in the distance were quite still. The bushes trembled no longer. It was Benjamin who found it hard not to tremble now, as he saw thirteen sharp arrows taken from their quivers by thirteen skinny brown hands, and their notches held taut to thirteen bow-strings, all ready to shoot. Yet still the Friends sat on, without stirring, in complete silence.
FIERCE FEATHERS[ToList]
Only Benjamin, turning his head to look at his grandfather, saw Zebulon Hoxie, the patriarch of the Meeting, gazing full at the Chief, who had first approached. The Indian's flashing eyes, under the matted black eyebrows, gazed back fiercely beneath his narrow red forehead into the Quaker's calm blue eyes beneath the high white brow and snowy hair. No word was spoken, but in silence two powers were measured against one another—the power of hate, and the power of love. For steady friendliness to his strange visitors was written in every line of Zebulon Hoxie's face.
The children never knew how long that steadfast gaze lasted. But at length, to Benjamin's utter astonishment, for some unknown reason the Indian's eyes fell. His head, that he had carried high and haughtily, sank towards his breast. He glanced round the Meeting-house three times with a scrutiny that nothing could escape. Then, signing to his followers, the thirteen arrows were noiselessly replaced in thirteen quivers, the thirteen bows were laid down and rested against the wall; many footsteps, lighter than falling snow, crossed the floor; the Indian Chief, unarmed, sat himself down in the nearest seat, with his followers in all their war-paint, but also unarmed, close round him.
The Meeting did not stop. The Meeting continued—one of the strangest Friends' Meetings, surely, that ever was held. The Meeting not only continued, it increased in solemnity and in power.
Never, while they lived, did any of those present that day forget that silent Meeting, or the brooding Presence, that, closer, clearer than the sunlight, filled the bright room.
'Cover thee with His feathers all the day long.'
The Friends sat in their accustomed stillness. But the Indians sat more still than any of them. They seemed strangely at home in the silence, these wild men of the woods. Motionless they sat, as a group of trees on a windless day, or as a tranquil pool unstirred by the smallest breeze; silent, as if they were themselves a part of Nature's own silence rather than of the family of her unquiet, human children.
The slow minutes slipped past. The peace brooded, and grew, and deepened. 'Am I dreaming?' Mrs. Hoxie thought to herself more than once, and then, raising her eyes, she saw the Indians still in the same place, and knew it was no dream. She saw, too, that Benjamin's eyes were riveted to some objects hanging from the strangers' waists, that none of the other Friends appeared to see.
At last, when the accustomed hour of worship was ended, the two Friends at the head of the Meeting shook hands solemnly. Then, and not till then, did old Zebulon Hoxie advance to the Indian Chief, and with signs he invited him and his followers to come to his house close at hand. With signs they accepted. The strange procession crossed the sunlit path. Susie and Dinah, wide awake now, but kept silent in obedience to their mother's whispers, were watching the feathers with clear, untroubled eyes that knew no fear. Only Benjamin shivered as if he were cold.
When the company had arrived at the house, Zebulon put bread and cheese on the table, and invited his unwonted guests to help themselves. They did so, thanking him with signs, as they knew little or no English. Robert Nisbet, the visiting Friend, who could speak and understand French, had a conversation with one of the Indians in that language, and this was what he said: 'We surrounded your house, meaning to destroy every living person within it. But when we saw you sitting with your door open, and without weapons of defence, we had no wish any longer to hurt you. Now, we would fight for you, and defend you ourselves from all who wish you ill.' Meanwhile the Chief who had entered first was speaking in broken English to old Zebulon Hoxie, gesticulating to make his meaning clear.
'Indian come White Man House,' he said, pointing with his finger towards the Settlement, 'Indian want kill white man, one, two, three, six, all!' and he clutched the tomahawk at his belt with a gruesome gesture. 'Indian come, see White Man sit in house; no gun, no arrow, no knife; all quiet, all still, worshipping Great Spirit. Great Spirit inside Indian too;' he pointed to his breast; 'then Great Spirit say: "Indian! No kill them!"' With these words, the Chief took a white feather from one of his arrows, and stuck it firmly over the centre of the roof in a peculiar way. 'With that white feather above your house,' the French-speaking Indian said to Robert Nisbet, 'your settlement is safe. We Indians are your friends henceforward, and you are ours.'
A moment later and the strange guests had all disappeared as noiselessly as they had come. But, when the bushes had ceased to tremble, Benjamin stole to his mother's side. 'Mother, did you see, did you see?' he whispered. 'They were not friendly Indians. They were the very most savage kind. Did you,' he shuddered, 'did you, and father, and grandfather, and the others not notice what those things were, hanging from their waists? They were scalps—scalps of men and women that those Indians had killed,' and again he shuddered.
His mother stooped and kissed him. 'Yea, my son,' she answered, 'I did see. In truth we all saw, too well, save only the tender maids, thy sisters, who know naught of terror or wrong. But thou, my son, when thou dost remember those human scalps, pray for the slayers and for the slain. Only for thyself and for us, have no fear. Remember, rather, the blessing of that other Benjamin, for whom I named thee. "The Belovéd of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him. He shall cover him all the day long."'
XXX. THE THIEF IN THE TANYARD[ToC]
'In the House of Love men do not curse nor swear; they do not destroy nor kill any. They use no outward swords or spears. They seek to destroy no flesh of man; but it is a fight of the cross and patience to the subduing of sin.'—HENRY NICHOLAS (circa 1540).
'We have to keep in mind the thought of Christ. To us it seems most important to stop the evil act, hold it down by force, or push off its consequences on to someone else: anything, so long as we get rid of them from ourselves. Christ's thought was to change the evil mind, whatever physical consequences action, directed to this end, might involve.... This is the essence of "turning the other cheek," it is the attitude most likely to convert the sinner who injures us, whether it actually does so or not,—we cannot force him to be converted.' ... 'Those who try this method of love for the sake of the evildoer must be prepared to go down, if necessary, as the front ranks storming a strong position go down, paying the price of victory for those who come after them. This method is not certain to conquer the evil mind: it is the most likely way to do it, and it is that that matters most.'—A. NEAVE BRAYSHAW.
XXX. THE THIEF IN THE TANYARD
Knock! knock! knock!
The tremulous sound, three times repeated, disturbed the stillness of an empty street of small wooden houses. The night was very dark, but the square mass of the tanner's house could just be discerned, black and solid against the sky. The rays of a solitary oil lamp straggled faintly across the roadway, and showed a man with a large bundle on his back standing on the doorstep of that house, knocking as if he were afraid of the noise he made.
Knock! knock! knock! He tried once more, but with growing timidity and hesitation. Evidently the inmates of the house were busy, or too far off to hear the feeble summons. No one answered. The man's small stock of courage seemed exhausted. Giving his heavy bundle a hitch back on to his shoulder, he slunk off down the road, to where at a little distance the small oil lamp high up on the wall beckoned faintly in the darkness. The all-pervading smell of a tannery close by filled the air.
When he came directly under the lamp, the man stopped. The light, falling directly upon the package he carried, showed it to be a bundle of hides all ready for tanning. Here he stopped, and drew out a piece of crumpled newspaper from his pocket. Smoothing out the creases as carefully as he could, he held it up towards the lamp, and read once more the strange words that he already knew almost by heart.
This notice was printed in large letters in the advertisement column: 'WHOEVER stole a lot of hides on the fifth day of the present month is HEREBY informed that their owner has a sincere wish to be his friend. If poverty tempted him to this false step the owner will keep the whole transaction secret, and will gladly put him in the way of obtaining money by means more likely to bring him peace of mind.'
'If poverty tempted him to this false step,' the man repeated to himself half aloud. 'Tanner Savery wraps up his meaning in fine words, but their sense is plain enough. If it was being poor that drove a man to become a thief and to steal these hides from the shadow of that dark archway down by the river last Sunday night,—suppose it was poverty, well what then? Friend Savery "will gladly put him in the way of obtaining money by means more likely to bring him peace of mind." Will he indeed? Can I trust him? Is it a hoax? I would rather do without the money now, if only I could get rid of these hides, and of their smell, that sticks to a man's nostrils even as sin does to his memory. But the tanner promises to give me back peace of mind, does he? Well, that's a fair offer and worth some risk. I'll knock once more at his door and see what happens.'
Stuffing the newspaper into his pocket he walked quickly up the road again, back to the square house, and up the sanded steps. Again he lifted the brass knocker, and again 'knock! knock! knock!' rang out on the night air. But this time the knocking was less tremulous, and as it happened the inmates of the house were crossing the hall on their way to bed and heard the sound at once. In less than a minute the door opened, and a square brass candlestick, held high up, threw its light out into the street. The candlestick was held by a tall man with greyish white hair, whom all the town knew as Tanner Savery. Peeping behind his shoulder appeared his wife's gentle face, surmounted by the clear muslin of a Quakeress's cap. The man on the doorstep never lifted up his eyes to the couple. 'I've brought them back, Mr. Savery,' he mumbled, too much ashamed even to explain what he meant by 'them.' But William Savery needed no explanation. Ever since the hides had mysteriously disappeared from his tanyard a few days before, he had felt sure that this quarrelsome neighbour of his must have taken them.
What was that neighbour's real name? That, nobody knows, or ever will know now. We only know that whatever it may have been it certainly was not John Smith, because when, in after years, Tanner Savery occasionally told this story he always called the stealer of his hides 'John Smith' in order to disguise his identity; so we will speak of John Smith too. 'A ne'er-do-well' was the character people gave him. They spoke of him as a man who was his own worst enemy, sadly too fond of his glass, and always quarrelling with his neighbours. Only William Savery refused to believe that any man could be altogether evil, and he kept a ray of hope in his heart for John Smith, even when his valuable bundle of hides mysteriously disappeared. It was that ray of hope that had made him put the advertisement in the paper, though he knew it would set the town laughing over 'those Quakers and their queer soft ways.' This evening the ray of hope was shining more brightly than ever. More brightly even than the candlelight shone in the darkness of the night, the hope in his heart shone through the brightness of the Tanner's eyes and smile. Yet he only answered cheerily, 'All right, friend, wait till I can light a lantern and go to the barn to take them back with thee.'
There was no trace of surprise in his voice. Those matter-of-fact tones sounded as if it were the most natural thing in the world to go out to the tanyard at 10 o'clock at night instead of going upstairs to bed.
'After we have done that,' he continued, 'perhaps thou wilt come in and tell me how this happened; we will see what can be done for thee.'
A lantern, hanging on its hook in the hall, was soon lighted. The two men picked their way down the sanded steps again, then passing under a high creeper-covered gateway they followed a narrow, flagged path to the tanyard.
All this time William Savery had not said one word to his wife—but the ring of happiness in his voice had made her happy too, and had told her what he would like her to do during his absence from the house. Lifting up the bedroom candlestick from the oak chest on which her husband had set it down, she hastened to the larder, then to the kitchen, where she poked up the fire into a bright glow, put a kettle on, and then went back again through the hall to the parlour, to and fro several times. When the two men returned to the house a quarter of an hour later, the fragrance of hot coffee greeted them. Solid pies and meat were spread out on the dark oak table. Mrs. Savery's pies were famous throughout the town. But besides pies there were cakes, buns, bread, and fruit,—a meal, indeed, to tempt any hungry man.
'I thought some hot supper would be good for thee, neighbour Smith,' said Mrs. Savery in her gentle voice, as she handed him some coffee in one of her favourite blue willow-pattern cups. But John Smith did not take the cup from her. Instead, he turned his back abruptly, went over to the high carved fireplace, and leaning down looking into the glowing coals, said in a choked voice, 'It is the first time I ever stole anything, and I can tell you I have felt very bad about it ever since. I don't know how it is. I am sure I didn't think once that I should ever come to be a thief. First I took to drinking and then to quarrelling. Since I began to go downhill everybody gives me a kick; you are the first people who have offered me a helping hand. My wife is sickly and my children are starving. You have sent them many a meal, God bless you! Yet I stole the hides from you, meaning to sell them the first chance I could get. But I tell you the truth when I say, drunkard as I am, it is the first time I was ever a thief.'
'Let it be the last time, my friend,' replied William Savery, 'and the secret shall remain between ourselves. Thou art still young, and it is within thy power to make up for lost time. Promise me that thou wilt not take any strong drink for a year, and I will employ thee myself in the tanyard at good wages. Perhaps we may find some employment for thy family also. The little boy can, at least, pick up stones. But eat a bit now, and drink some hot coffee; perhaps it will keep thee from craving anything stronger tonight.'
So saying, William Savery advanced, and taking his guest by the arm, gently forced him into a chair. Mrs. Savery pushed the cup towards him, and heaped his plate with her excellent meat-pies. The stranger took up the cup to drink, but his hand trembled so much that he could not put it to his lips. He tried to swallow a small mouthful of bread, but the effort nearly choked him. William Savery, seeing his guest's excited state, went on talking in his grave kind voice, to give him time, and help him to grow calm.
'Doubtless thou wilt find it hard to abstain from drink at first,' he continued, 'but keep up a brave heart for the sake of thy wife and children, and it will soon become easy. Whenever thou hast need of coffee tell my wife, Mary, and she will give it thee.'
Mary Savery's blue eyes shone as she nodded her head; she did not say a word, for she saw that her guest was nearly at an end of his composure. Gently she laid her hand on his rough sleeve as if to try to calm and reassure him. But even her light touch was more than he could bear at that moment. Pushing the food and drink away from him untasted, he laid both his arms on the table, and burying his head, he wept like a child.
The husband and wife looked at each other. 'Can I do anything to help him?' Mary's eyes asked her husband in silence. 'Leave him alone for a little; he will be better when this fit of tears is over,' his wise glance answered back.
William Savery was right. The burst of weeping relieved John Smith's over-wrought feelings. Besides, he really was almost faint with hunger. In a few moments, when the coffee was actually held to his lips, he found he could drink it—right down to the bottom of the cup. As if by magic, the cup was filled up again, and then, very quickly, the meatpies too began to disappear.
At each mouthful the man grew calmer. It was an entirely different John Smith who took leave of his kind friends an hour later. Again they followed him to the door. 'Try to do well, John, and thou wilt always find a friend in me,' William Savery said, as they parted. Mary Savery added no words—she was never a woman given to much talk. Only she slipped her fingers into her guest's hand with a touch that said silently, 'Fare thee well, friend.'
The next day John Smith entered the tanyard, not this time slinking in as a thief in the darkness, but introduced by the master himself as an engaged workman. For many years he remained with his employer, a sober, honest, and faithful servant, respected by others and respecting himself. The secret of the first visit was kept. William and Mary Savery never alluded to it, and John Smith certainly did not, though the memory of it never left him and altered all the rest of his life.
Long years after John Smith was dead, William Savery, in telling the story, always omitted the man's name. That is why he has to be called John Smith, because no one knows now, no one ever will know, what his real name may have been. 'But,' as William Savery used to say when he was prevailed on to tell the story, 'the thing to know and remember is that it is possible to overcome Evil with Good.'